Finn and Mia move to Stewkbury to renovate their first home, living in Finn's parents' guest house during the work.

Mia reveals to Finn that she is pregnant after secretly waiting three weeks for medical confirmation.

Mia discovers a cryptic message scratched in a childlike scrawl into the attic floorboards of her new home.

While investigating the attic, Mia finds a hidden wall concealing suitcases filled with decomposing children's bodies.

Mia falls from the attic and awakens in hospital after an emergency caesarean section safely delivers her son Sonny.

Mia develops PTSD, becomes obsessively fixated on identifying the murdered children, and begins neglecting newborn Sonny.

Mia attends a murdered child's funeral and discovers her father-in-law Dave appears in a class photo with two of the victims.

Mia searches Dave and Debbie's garage and finds childhood schoolwork proving Dave's handwriting matches the message in the attic.

A newspaper exposes Finn's secret six-year affair with his ex-girlfriend and the daughter they have been hiding from Mia.

Mia finds a concealed trapdoor in Dave and Debbie's garage holding suitcases and documents linking the couple to the murders.

Dave catches Mia investigating a shed, briefly holds her captive at the site of more suitcases, then dies by suicide in front of her.

Mia reviews her attic video footage and realizes Debbie deliberately shook the ladder to cause her devastating fall.

Finn and Mia find Debbie alone with an empty stroller in a cemetery, where Debbie confesses to murdering 40 children.

Debbie admits to kidnapping Finn as a baby and murdering his biological sister, revealing Dave knowingly helped her conceal everything.

Debbie is sentenced to lifelong psychiatric incarceration, and Finn eventually tracks Sonny to Norway where Debbie's brother has been raising him.

Finn and Mia Hunter move to the small village of Stewkbury to renovate their first home, unaware of the darkness hidden inside its walls. A cryptic message carved into the attic floorboards sends Mia on an investigation that ends in a horrifying discovery of children's bodies and a catastrophic fall that forces the early delivery of her son Sonny. As Mia battles PTSD and uncovers evidence pointing toward her father-in-law Dave, the family fractures under the weight of secrets, betrayal, and an escalating hunt for the truth. Dave's suspicious death by suicide appears to close the case, but Mia's dogged persistence reveals that the real killer has been living among them all along. Debbie's confession in a cemetery exposes decades of murder, manipulation, and a stolen identity at the heart of the Hunter family. Her imprisonment does not end the horror, as the novel's final revelation makes clear that the cycle of violence has already passed to the next generation.

The central mystery of the Hunter family's house of horrors.

Finn and Mia discover a noose hanging from a ceiling hook while walking through their new home for the first time.

Debbie makes a cutting remark about Mia's infertility during a family conversation, and neither Finn nor Dave supports Mia.

An unknown intruder breaks into Finn and Mia's house at night, watches Mia sleep, and spits in her mouth.

Mia shares the pregnancy news with Dave and Debbie by presenting them with an ultrasound photo at a local pub.

Finn secretly monitors Mia's internet activity through their shared account while deliberately concealing his own secrets from her.

Mia reconnects with a college friend named Lorna to learn about Lorna's murdered little brother, one of the attic victims.

Dave secretly follows Mia by car as she drives out of town to attend the funeral of one of the attic victims.

Mia confronts Dave directly with a class photo proving he attended school alongside two of the murdered or injured victims.

Debbie offers to purchase Mia a new house and send her back to London on the condition that Mia surrenders full custody of Sonny.

Dave secretly vomits blood and internally reveals he was the anonymous source who tipped off the newspaper about Finn's affair to distract Mia.

Finn and Mia separate following Dave's death, sharing joint custody of Sonny while Mia moves in with her returning parents.

Mark the detective tells Mia that Dave never directly confessed to the murders, raising serious doubt about whether he was the real killer.

Finn arrives at Mia's home with documents proving Debbie is the killer, just as they realize Debbie has taken Sonny.

Finn pins Debbie to the ground in the cemetery and wraps his hands around her throat.

Finn secretly visits Debbie in her psychiatric cell, where she reveals she trained him to murder as a teenager and hints Sonny may be alive.

From the moment Finn and Mia step into their new home, a web of tensions begins forming beneath the surface of ordinary family life. Debbie's hostility toward Mia, Finn's covert surveillance of his wife, and Dave's secret health struggles all point to a family held together by concealment rather than trust. As Mia pursues the truth about the attic, the people around her undermine, gaslight, and manipulate her at every turn, each protecting secrets of their own. The public exposure of Finn's affair shatters what remains of the marriage, sending the family into freefall even as the real investigation intensifies. Mia's determination ultimately forces a confrontation that no one can escape, culminating in violence in a cemetery and a shocking prison visit that reframes everything the reader thought they knew about Finn. The secondary players and overlooked moments in this pool reveal just how thoroughly the Hunter family's culture of secrecy made the murders possible.

The hidden pressures and fractures tearing the Hunter family apart.

The prologue's anonymous narrator confesses to luring children to the house for their parents to murder, calling themselves the bait.

Dave secretly self-medicates a serious and painful stomach condition with alcohol and illegally obtained painkillers, hiding his illness from his family.

Finn's internal monologue reveals he is hiding a significant secret from Mia, one he is certain would end their marriage if discovered.

A stalker's flashback reveals they recruited a younger accomplice and patiently trained them in the rituals of stalking, selecting, and murdering children.

After Mia begins recovering and reconnecting with Sonny, Debbie grows resentful and quietly plots ways to push Mia out of Sonny's life.

A flashback reveals that after George attacks their parents and is dragged to the attic, young Debbie wakes to find him gone and presumes him dead.

Young Debbie, imprisoned in her own family's attic by her murderous mother, carves the message that Mia will later discover in the floorboards.

Precious and the narrator escape the house together, but Precious panics upon realizing her companion is not a fellow captive and flees blindly into traffic.

After attacking Precious with a piece of wood, the narrator manipulates the car's driver into fleeing the scene, and the two introduce themselves as Dave and Debbie.

A DNA test reveals Finn shares no biological connection to Dave and Debbie, confirming Mia's theory that he was stolen as an infant.

Debbie reveals she kidnapped baby Finn to replace a child she and Dave had lost, murdering Finn's biological sister in the process.

George's perspective reveals he agreed to raise Sonny in Norway after Debbie falsely convinced him that Sonny's parents were neglectful and abusive.

Finn tells Debbie during a prison visit that he has located Sonny and will never return, then walks out of her life permanently.

Finn and Mia travel to a hospital in Oslo and are reunited with Sonny after a private investigator successfully tracked him to Norway.

The epilogue reveals Finn has secretly murdered multiple adults, storing bodies in suitcases and encouraging Sonny to play with the skeletal remains.

Behind the Hunter family's present-day drama lies a history of violence, manipulation, and inherited trauma stretching back generations. Flashback chapters slowly reveal that the unnamed stalker narrating these sequences is Debbie herself, a child survivor of her parents' murders who was used as bait and ultimately became a killer in her own right. Key turning points expose the full depth of the deception at work: Finn is not Dave and Debbie's biological son, Dave died protecting Debbie's secrets rather than confessing to his own, and Debbie's brother George was not murdered but secretly spirited away to Norway. The most devastating revelation comes in the epilogue, where Finn's inner life is finally laid bare and it becomes clear that Debbie's influence did not end with her incarceration. Each event in this pool represents a moment where the story's apparent reality collapses and a darker truth takes its place.