Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Bones of two severed hands are found in a box starting an investigation which reveals some very dark secrets buried in the past…
The Girl Next Door
What you need to know before your trail
Loughton Essex
A nice place to grow up. A nice play to play. Seventy years ago, a group of children used to play on the green meadows in the town and stumble across a network of tunnels dug deep underground. They use them as a playground and they become their special place.
Seventy years later and the landscape has changed somewhat. Developers have long moved in and people have moved away from the area, whilst others have moved to the area.
Work begins on a new house but when something from the past is found buried in the ground, the past and the present will come together and reveal secrets buried long ago are no longer hidden….
Travel Guide
The tunnels underneath the town of Loughton in Essex…real or fiction?
The tunnels are now used to link up past and present as a box containing bones of human hands, held together over time, are found, revealing many secrets that have been bound together for many years.
During the war, the series of tunnels was an innocent place for many – where children played and had adventures. No one really knew why the tunnels were there, nor did they care, but they spent their days there playing., inventing games and scaring each other with tales of the tunnels.
Now seventy years later, many of these children are old, or have died. The grisly discovery found in a biscuit tin reawakens times past. Old memories come to the surface although there are some who have known and have waited for this moment for many years.
The victims and murderer are known from the outset but the reveal of the hands, the significance of them over time and the passing of time merge to evoke a cold and lonely place. The children are all grown up now – well those who are left – and the elderly residents are forced to look back and remember.
People make mistakes, people learn and try to move on and age has nothing to do with it. The community has changed a lot but those who are left remember the here and now as well as the past. And seventy years is a long time to carry memories…
Especially in Loughton..
Where Next?
