The Babysitter's Phone

Read sample ▶ Listen to a sample

The babysitter left her phone on the kitchen island. The message that lit it up was about my son. HAIR FROM THE BRUSH. NOT THE PILLOW. IT HAS TO HAVE THE ROOTS ON. Sophie Marchant's babysitter is seventeen, takes her shoes off at the door, and is the only person her three-year-old son Arlo will let do the Gruffalo voices. Then, one Friday night in January, Maisie leaves her phone behind, and a message from her mother lights up the screen. Upstairs, Arlo's hairbrush is clean. It's never clean on a Friday. The babysitter's mother cuts hair on Church Street. Sophie's husband has been sitting in her chair since October. A child's toothbrush vanishes from a locked house. And when the police warn the woman off, she asks them to pass on one thing: a date. The nineteenth of January, 2023. It is a date Sophie has spent four years trying not to remember. The Babysitter's Phone is a twisty domestic thriller told by three women: the mother with a secret, the teenager who stole for hers, and the one person who has been grieving all along. • Short chapters, three narrators, and more than one twist you can go back and find the clues for. • No sexual content and no violence on the page. The danger is in what a family will do to keep a child. • Set in present-day Reading over one January and February. Perfect for readers of Freida McFadden, Lisa Jewell and Claire Douglas.