Cirrus@Austlit

'If this were a story, it would start with an argument. It would start with Ben and me arguing about something vaguely prescient, something to give the thing that happened a kind of existential echo—a child we wanted to have, or couldn’t have, or used to have. That would work. But the truth is we never wanted children. The truth is that when it happened we were listening to the BBC World Service on the car radio. Two ex-pats and the staticky scraps of empire, the sky heavy with desert grit and dawdling bats.' (Introduction)

'The first girl is taken on the second weekend of the school holidays. Her name is Julie-Anne Marks; she is nineteen, she is beautiful, and she is gone. Everywhere we look Julie-Anne Marks is looking back at us. Just the one photo at first – the one her parents gave the police the night she didn’t come home. Julie-Anne Marks is stuffed into our letterboxes, pinned to every bulletin board, taped to every telephone pole. She takes up the whole front page of The Messenger – a full page in colour, block-capital headline. WHERE IS OUR JULIE-ANNE?' (Introduction)