“Not knowing what happened to her was like an incurable illness that didn’t have a name.”

Gone is the third novel by Australian author, Glenna Thomson. When she was seventeen, Rebecca Bundy disappeared. Her fourteen-year-old sister, Eliza watched her walk away after a very public and frankly, embarrassing, altercation with their mother, Diane over money missing from a purse. Her parents didn’t seem too concerned when she didn’t come home that night: they expected she would turn up when she’d cooled down, as she had a few weeks earlier.

When she didn’t return, they involved the police, who were at first dismissive then, soon after, distracted by the murder-suicide of a local farming family. For whom Rebecca used to babysit: was that relevant? Eliza had always found the husband, Jacob Healy, creepy…

Another creepy guy she considered was their orchard hand, but his alibi seemed to stand up. Gossip claimed that Rebecca was spending lunchtimes with her young, charismatic Maths teacher, something the man vehemently denied. And then there was the unfamiliar man with the black dog who seemed to be paying rather too close attention to that humiliating interaction between her mother and sister.

There was talk of Rebecca running off to Queensland, but Bull Tennant, the young man with whom she’d been forbidden to associate, maintained that this wasn’t her plan: they’d a firm agreement to meet the following morning. Eliza believed him, was convinced that he had nothing to do with Rebecca’s disappearance, and never faltered in that belief, even though Diane was sure he was involved.

A few things puzzled Eliza: would Rebecca have left wearing her school uniform? Not taken her best bra, her contraceptive pills, T-shirts and undies? And hard to believe that she didn’t ring home when the Healy family tragedy became national news. Or on Christmas Day.

But there was no-one to talk to about it: her mother took to her bed, and when she was awake, aware, snobbish Diane seemed more concerned about the gossip than Rebecca’s whereabouts. Eliza began to wonder if there had been a beauty hierarchy in their family, with their mother and Rebecca competing for the top spot.

Her father, never effusive, now withdrew even further: “I was going to him for a hug, but he stretched out his arms to keep me at a distance. Of all the things that happened in those confusing days and weeks, I remember his rejection as a marker. That moment when I understood I was alone, that my family had changed in a way I couldn’t make sense of.”

Thomson paints a graphic picture of a family falling apart as the frustration at the lack of resolution, the constant cycle of hope and despair, take their toll. The gossip about Rebecca’s association with these other men has Eliza wondering just how well she knew her sister, but her father reminds her “She’s not a stranger. She’s your sister and a victim of rumours and misunderstandings. Don’t ever forget that.”

Thomson expertly conveys the fourteen-year-old voice, the singular focus on herself, her confusion about how her parents react, how they deal with the worry, the grief, the uncertainty, and what she does to cope. The whole experience so overwhelming that even later in life “no matter where I was or what I was doing, happy, sad, getting on with things, Rebecca’s absence was profound.”

The stigma of mental illness also plays a part: the family’s determination to keep Diane’s condition under the radar fuels rumour about strange behaviour. Thomson gives the reader a plot with plenty of intrigue: even if readers deduce the answer to one small aspect of the story at the start, the slow reveal of the truth as Eliza puts the facts together will keep even the most astute reader guessing and the pages turning. Thomson’s marvellous descriptive prose enhances this powerful, gripping and thought-provoking read.