It's the 1980s in Birmingham, England, and 'junior detective' Kate Meaney, with her 'top secret' notebook and Mickey her toy monkey, is busy observing the goings-on at newly opened Green Oaks shopping centre. Mysteriously, she disappears without trace.
Twenty years later, the image of a lost little girl appears on the shopping mall's security cameras. Entranced by this little girl they keep glimpsing on the CCTV, Kurt, a security guard with a sleeping disorder, and Lisa, the disenchanted deputy manager of a cut-price record store, begin to follow her through the endless corridors of the shopping mall.
As their after-hours friendship intensifies, they investigate how these sightings of the lost little girl might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself.
Catherine O'Flynn deftly combines humour, love, loss, and grief in this brilliant satire of the absurdity of consumer society.
