The silent children

the long version

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). Vienna, 1938: Something's amiss at the home of young Annabel Albrecht and it's got nothing to do with the Nazis. First, her favourite maid Eva disappears, then her friend Oskar. What's worse, her mother is taken away, leaving Annabel to fend for herself. London 2004: Max receives a letter from his dying and estranged mother, Annabel, who requests his help. Following their last argument he has no desire to contact her. But his curiosity is piqued by the black and white photograph she had enclosed: a disturbing image of his mother and forgotten childhood friend, Oskar Edelstein, taken in Vienna, 1938. Stranger still are the words, 'you knew', scrawled on its reverse. The photograph and the message, are, his mother writes, part of the reason for her distance towards him. She wants him to find Oskar ... The photograph haunts him following his mother's death - and there's something about her old house in Vienna that's not quite right.