She went on to meet and marry Dominic, a little older than her he wanted to look after them both and to provide a home and holidays and days at the seaside and everything else a family should enjoy together but he too, had secrets and at the beginning of the story, he too, has died. Joanne HarrisA mother at sixteen, and on her own, Rebecca has tried hard to make life for her own daughter, Emily, as normal as possible.
Her parents have never accepted the death of their beloved son, their favourite first born, and Rebecca has been neglected ever since. She has endured mental torment, terrified by the gurgling pipes in her old Victorian home which ‘prove’ the existence of her childhood demon, Mr Smallface. The five-year-old ‘witness’ could not supply any information and, traumatized by events, her memory was securely locked behind ‘a green door’. Did he run away, was he abducted or the victim of a grisly murder? ‘The Disappearance of Conrad Price’ has long been the subject of documentaries, books and articles and despite the efforts of imposters, charlatans and the odd medium, no trace of him has ever been found. She is also a woman with a past, a woman who, as a five-year-old, lost her brother, older by ten years. It has cost Ms Buckfast a lot to reach this venerated position, thus widening A Narrow Door for those who follow, not least because she is a woman and the male-dominated old guard don’t like it.
She is the ‘new New Head’ at St Oswald’s Academy, the first female in history to take on the role, and in the year the old boys’ school merges with Mulberry House, to become co-ed. Don’t try to read this novel all in one sitting, It’s much too intense, creating as it does, a dark world of emotional complexity where nothing is what it seems. As for A Narrow Door, my goodness, I couldn’t put it down and yet I had to - at frequent intervals. This novel is the last in the Malbry trilogy but may be read as a standalone – indeed, I didn’t know about the other two books - Gentleman & Players (2005) and Different Class (2016) - when I read it and I don’t think anything was lost because of the omission.
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