A Fatal Inversion (1987)

A summer household at Wyvis Hall leaves consequences that its former members cannot keep safely in the past. Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell’s pen name, moves between the group’s apparently suspended responsibilities and the later lives built on what happened there. Read for the different bargains people make with memory, loyalty and self-preservation. The discovery of a woman’s and a child’s remains gives this gradual unravelling a deeply disturbing foundation.