THE BEACON
This story was loosely inspired by a very famous missing persons case that happened here in Australia before I was born. Three children went to the beach on their own for the day, and never came back. I grew up hearing about this story at school, usually from a teacher in the context of the danger of talking to strangers, but as a child all that struck me about it was that it was a spookily intriguing mystery. Back in 1998, when I became a mother, (admittedly, not the greatest one), it took on a whole new degree of obsession. Nobody appreciates the needless tragedy of a missing child like a mother. THE BEACON Erin and Connie Danvers loved the beach. They lived with their mother and their little sister, Daphne, in a little white house at the top of a road, at the other end of which was the beach. The twins set out every morning of the school holidays, carrying their towels in one hand and a coin purse full of ice cream money in the other, (Erin also kept a Lucky Coin in hers – one...