While My Eyes Were Closed by Linda Green is on my TBR and so I’m delighted to be featuring an extract from the book today in celebration of the paperback launch. Already available in e-book While My Eyes Were Closed will be available in paperback from 5th May 2016 from Amazon and directly from the publishers Quercus, Waterstones, WH Smith and all good book sellers.

While My Eyes Were Closed

One, two, three . . . Lisa Dale shuts her eyes and counts to one hundred during a game of hide-and-seek. When she opens them, her four-year-old daughter Ella is gone. Disappeared without a trace. The police, the media and Lisa’s family all think they know who snatched Ella. But what if the person who took her isn’t a stranger? What if they are convinced they are doing the right thing? And what if Lisa’s little girl is in danger of disappearing forever?

An Extract from While My Eyes Were Closed

Your body realises you have lost your child before your brain does. The invisible umbilical cord between you snaps. Everything inside you goes loose and limp. Only then does your brain register what is happening. It kicks into action, trying to prove to your body that it is wrong. You do what it tells you, of course. You scramble in every direction. Pulling and pulling on your end of that cord. Hoping that if you pull hard enough, if you shout and kick and scream, if you can only get to the other end, you might somehow find your child still there.

When they are not. When it is clear that they have gone. That is when the guilt kicks in. You are their mother. You have a duty to look after them. And you have failed in that duty of care, therefore you are a failed mother. How can you be anything else when it happened on your watch? While your eyes were closed, for goodness’ sake.

That is when you start to shut down inside. One by one, your vital organs cease to function. It is hard to know how you carry on breathing, how the blood pumps around your body, because you are certainly not doing it willingly.

You wish that somebody would be kind enough to put you out of your misery. Until you realise that this is the price you must pay – to suffer in the way that your child has. You deserve nothing less for letting them down so badly. And so you live your non-existent life. And every day when you wake up, if you have been lucky enough to get any sleep at all, the first word you say is sorry. They can’t reply, of course. But you say it all the same. In the hope that somehow they will hear and forgive you. Even though you know you will never forgive yourself.

You can find out more about While My Eyes Were Closed and Linda Green on Linda’s website and by following her on Twitter. You’ll also find her on Facebook.

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