‘They’ve seen each other before,’ the nurse says, spookily, enigmatically. Vicki and Susan look at each other, they just look and look. When Susan first meets Vicki, her new baby sister, she puts a hand on her tiny forearm, and Vicki stops screaming. Just like that. If only it were so easy forty-five years later. Susan has always been the quiet, nice sister, but her husband’s sudden demand for an open marriage – and a rather large purple object she’d forgotten about – provokes a slow-dawning epiphany: being the ‘good’ girl doesn’t always mean it’s good for you. Just down the road, Vicki listens at the door of her seventeen-year-old daughter’s room – her only child – and is shocked at what she hears. Her old urge to scream builds. As she listens to a true crime podcast and doom scrolls the news headlines, she can feel a terror building in her bones. She can’t help believing something very bad is going to happen. It’s January in suburban Australia – stinking hot, the sound of tennis and cricket on telly, the threat of bushfires in the air. Vicki is right, something is unravelling. Rage, desire, fear, wonder (and the occasional nipple) are unleashed. In the aftermath, will Susan and Vicki ever find out what’s possible when no one’s looking? No One’s Looking is an original, wise and life-affirming novel that shows it is never too late to change who people expect you to be.
