His marriage is disintegrating due to the lack of children, and now in walks one from the past. Tom, who is writing a book on the moral sense of juvenile delinquents, agrees to see Danny to help them both come to terms with the past. The central relationship between Tom and Danny proves compelling. Increasingly aware that Danny's reappearance is no coincidence, Tom reconstructs what he can of Danny's experiences through interviews with him and his acquaintances, including Martha, the probation officer who looks after Danny and, increasingly, Tom. The parallels with the imminent release of Jamie Bulger's killers lend the story an urgent crackle that helps transcend the thriller conventions from which it draws its form.
Time proves unforgiving to all.
Lauren battles against her body clock in her desire for children, while their marriage goes as limp as Tom, faced with the battery of thermometers and calendars. Both men battle against the discovery by the media of Danny's new identity, culminating in a climax that dramatically tests the reasons for his reappearance in Tom's life, and forces the psychologist once more to determine his fate. All that leaves is for Tom's emotional life to resolve itself, though a chance meeting years later scratches the surface of memory, a palimpsest from which the elderly victim's image can never be expunged. Early on, Danny passes on to Tom the prison chaplain's line that coincidence was the crack in human affairs that lets God or the Devil in. Barker's intent is to show how small that crevice can be.