Heddy Partridge was never my friend. I have to start with that.

Heddy Partridge was never my friend because I was pretty, popular, clever and blonde and my friends were pretty, popular, clever and generally blonde, too.

Heddy Partridge was none of these things.

Laura Hamley is the woman who has everything: a loving and successful husband, two beautiful children, an expensive home and a set of equally fortunate friends.

But Laura's perfect world is suddenly threatened when she receives an unwelcome phone call from Mrs Partridge, mother of Heddy - the girl Laura and her friends bullied mercilessly at school. Heddy has been hospitalized following a mental breakdown, and Mrs Partridge wants Laura's help to get her released.

As Laura reluctantly gets drawn back into the past, she is forced to face the terrible consequences of her cruelty. But, as her secrets are revealed, so too is another even more devastating truth, and the perfect world Laura has so carefully constructed for herself begins to fall apart.

This Perfect World is the debut novel from a brilliant dark new voice.