Despite of this narratives’ simplicity, deploying two time frames, namely the “Then” and “Now”; with just two central characters, this is a book that keeps you ‘well and truly’ on your toes.
The "Then" is twelve years previous with Kit Owens and Diane Fleming in their senior High School year. Kit and Diane have been friends for only a few months but have become close. As a result, Kit gains more confidence in her abilities and aspires to higher things than just going to City Tech. Diane encourages Kit to apply for the Dr Lena Severin STEM Scholarship for Women in Science, for State University, even though she is going for it herself. However, during one of their study sessions Diane tells Kit a dark secret, which once told cannot be untold and the magnitude of it damages their friendship.
In the "Now", Dr Kit Owens is working in Dr Severin's laboratory and hoping (along with the other Post-Doctoral members of staff), to be one of the few chosen for a prestigious new research project. When Diane is announced as a new member of the lab team, tensions are subtly revealed within the group. Kit re-encounters suppressed emotions as she tries to deal with Diane's arrival.
The laboratory provides a perfect closed setting for jealousy, gossip and speculation at both a professional and personal level. In this atmosphere, secrets are sometimes difficult to keep.
The interweaving of the ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ story-segments are an important contribution to the reader's ongoing reassessment of the characters; akin to the way light and shadow can mask or reveal much in the lines of a face glimpsed in a crowd, or as an portrait hanging in a gallery.
As the drama between Kit and Diane plays out, the figure of Dr Severin is always there in the background, although she is not a primary character in the story, her presence is pivotal. I found many of the characters unappealing but this did not diminish my overall positive appreciation of the book.
A well-paced and nuanced psychological thriller.
