The drama of Betty’s disappearance makes a brilliant opening chapter. Revelations keep on coming right to the end, with each new twist forcing Cumming to reappraise the story
And far from knowing nothing, people locally – locked in “acts of communal silence” that would continue for decades – knew far more than they let on. The person who took her was a relative, not a stranger. Until Veda and George adopted her, just a few weeks previously, Betty had been called Grace. The circumstances that led to her being snatched were shrouded in secrets and lies. Not only did Betty turn up safe, in a house 12 miles inland. But this wasn’t an abduction like James Bulger’s or Madeleine McCann’s. For Betty’s parents, Veda (who had taken her to the beach) and George (summoned from where he had got to that week in his job as a travelling salesman), the next few days were a nightmare. The police were called to investigate but no one in the village of Chapel St Leonard had seen anything. It was autumn, with few people around, but after “a prolonged moment of parental inattention”, the three-year-old had gone. In 1929 Laura Cumming’s mother Betty was kidnapped from a beach in Lincolnshire.
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