The Guilty

2008 – a glorious May bank holiday weekend. A four year old boy goes missing after a neighbourhood barbecue. Believed to have been abducted, a nationwide search and media frenzy ensue, but the boy is never found. Present day – the wettest spring on record. Workmen digging up a burst water main uncover a body under the communal garden. Little Callum Reid – buried just yards from his own front door. The missing boy never left Arcadian Gardens. In 2008, Arcadian Gardens is a desirable address - a suburban oasis with comfortable detached homes overlooking a private shared garden. Unlike most anonymous urban streets, the residents pride themselves on their sense of community. Children play in the communal garden. People feed each others pets and water one anothers plants and, of course, every May Bank Holiday theres the annual neighbourhood barbecue. Then little Callum Reid from No. 4 goes missing and nothing is ever the same again. Five years on, Arcadian Gardens is a very different place. An address synonymous with tragedy. The grief-stricken parents’ and their neighbours’ lives were torn apart by the events of that long May weekend and even after all this time the wounds are still raw. Then, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of his disappearance, Callum’s body is discovered, buried only yards from his own front door. And the nightmare begins all over again.

Under pressure to charge her prime suspect, Maggies still not convinced theyve found the killer. However, shes taken aback to discover that her stalker had close links to the Reid family. Meanwhile, Theresas return pushes Claire and Daniels marriage to breaking point and Luke is shaken by the reappearance of a teenage neighbour, who seems intent on making amends for the past. As pressure grows to go public with the arrest, Maggie finds herself increasingly isolated at work and home as she confronts the reality that her son isnt like the other children in his class. When her suspect reveals information that only the killer could have known, Maggie has no choice but to charge them. But when a conflicted Teresa reignites Maggie’s suspicions about Daniel, Maggie begins to piece together Callum’s final hours, finding her instinct as a mother at war with her desire to solve the crime, as she comes to understand that that death isnt always the hardest loss to bear. Then a brutal death effectively closes the case and Maggie faces a stark choice – will she protect her career or expose the truth? As the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place, we finally learn how and why Callum Reid died and how a terrible misunderstanding spiralled into a lie that destroyed a whole community.