Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. Following the death of his mother, Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. He’s falling in with the wrong crowd, and needs Malachi to keep him straight. Elvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things. Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there’s no way out.

Then their lives are transformed as plane crashes into the block of flats they call home, causing devastation. Who has survived? How do they cope? Why is life so unfair? How will their relationships change? All this is explored in Luan Goldie’s debut novel.

She was inspired to write Nightingale Point when in Amsterdam a taxi driver told her the true story about a cargo plane that took off from Schiphol Airport and crashed into a council estate It’s based on the Bijlmer plane crash in October 1992, and the Grenfell Tower disaster, and echoes of the aftermath of both play out in the book. But it doesn’t ever feel gratuitous, helped by a cast of likeable and flawed characters. It’s an easy read with tight prose and a pacy plot, probably helped by Luan’s experience of writing short stories. She won the 2017 Costa Short Story Award.

It’s a touching read and acts as a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives in Amsterdam and London.

The tale follows Polly, a 32 year old journalist working in an unfulfilling job for Posh! magazine, and perennially single. Her head is turned by Jasper, a member of the British aristocracy, at the same time as her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer. One of these things has a better outcome than the other. But everything works out well in the end, as Polly realises what she wants, and seems to get it.

Written in a funny, at times deadpan way, it’s an easy and enjoyable read. Sophia was a features editor at Tatler, so it’s clear where she got some of her ideas from. As well as barely covered digs at some of the things the richest echelons of society get up to, it covers modern relationships, friendships, and life in London with accuracy and attentiveness. The mother daughter relationship is also sensitively portrayed, and one of the book’s highlights.

The novel’s been described as an updated Bridget Jones, but it’s unlikely to be as genre or era defining as that. But Polly is a character to care about, and I found myself wanting to know what happened next, keeping the pages turning. The Plus One is a good, fun, and easy read. Sometimes that’s all you need.

The plot is tight, and the themes strong. Like Seb the reader is ‘an intruder of sorts, a time travelling interloper,’ an ‘anthropologist’ studying a group. It might be a book about life and death, given the circumstances in which we arrive at this point in the story and the experience of grief, ‘the aggressive displacement of the self from a known universe to another.’ It could be about relationships, how the web of loves and likes creates the life we live, and how much we really know about someone else: ‘I wanted someone at the funeral to tell me about the life she lived before I knew her. In that way, I thought I could continue knowing her, could continue with the journey that we had started. I’d simply take a detour, I thought. I’d go backwards.’

Memories and their ever shifting nature are powerful themes. Seb finds himself playing games to capture Leila’s image, and that image changing. He is seeking the truth, but that truth shifts. He needs to know facts where there aren’t any.

‘It’s debatable how much of memory is fabrication. I believe there’s been research done to refute the idea that these two things come from the exact same place. But this notion speaks to my sensibilities. It will be a sad day for me if they manage to pinpoint the exact split. How wonderful to me to imagine a flush system that panders to our need to own and to order and to collect events and occasions as if they belong to us.’

The language is compelling, with Seb’s voice expressing life’s truths. ‘I seek for meaning in every miserable glint and shadow,’ says Seb, and Goldstone offers this meaning in a way that never seems hackneyed. It doesn’t wrap up with a neat plot, but is suggestive and uncertain, like the topics Goldstone discusses. The unknowability of life and others continues on beyond the final page. The beat goes on.

At only 21 and having experienced as many of the trials of life as it seems possible to have, Beth is in prison, due to committing a crime that the world and she believes can never be forgiven. She is, in her own words, 100% TM bad. And through self punishment and ingrained thoughts will never let that go.

But her counsellor, Erika, has hope. No one is all bad she believes. Through writing about the good things that she has, Beth is coaxed to realising that she is not evil, nothing is black and white, and the past is not the future. Snapshots of Beth’s life come through diary entries, letters, care reports, social worker summaries and first person narratives. We know that there has been a mum, and a baby. We learn about relationships, failed ones. There’s a few friendships that span both circumstantial and real.

But it’s fragmented, just like her past, and it’s this method of writing that turns a sad tale into a deep and emotional one. Detail of her breakdown are in fractured prose. Intense introspection in angry stream of consciousness. The memory drives the plot and the reader is with Beth as she confronts her actions and feels her emotions. We’re with her as she builds a life. Describing a childhood friendship, Beth writes ‘Being human doesn’t just mean connecting to other humans; it means connecting the human you are now with the ones you used to be.’

Female relationships play a key role in the story, and the way that Beth speaks of her unborn daughter as her team mate, ‘us’ is tender and heartening. This baby is the first person she has believed will never let her go. An unexpected pregnancy isn’t something that Beth can walk away from – unlike the father – and neither is it something that she wants to. Yet an unmarried mother with no money isn’t always welcomed.  ‘I feel that as a society we are far harsher on ‘bad’ women than ‘bad’ men; I suppose that was another motivation in writing a character like Beth.’

Beth’s history of the care system, therapy and prison all influence her personality. Clearly she is not 100% bad, but like everyone, a product of her experiences. Claire loved the experience of writing a messy character. ‘It was her difficulty and complexity which kept me writing. Most characters I write are outsiders or oddballs in some way.’  Whether you believe that they are oddballs, byproducts of a structurally damaging society, or something more sinister, it’s true that prisoners don’t usually get a voice. If writing fiction has any duties, this might be one. As Claire says  ‘For me, fiction is about taking the reader somewhere they’ve not been before. This might be a psychological place, it might be a culture or society they’ve not thought about. Writing about someone in prison allowed me to delve into all kinds of new places.’

On Clare’s website she lists books she’s loved and books that make her. Authors include Emma Unsworth, Sylvia Plath,  Kate Tempest and Zadie Smith.  With all of these writers, ‘it’s the voice which really grabs me – a voice which is unafraid to delve into all areas of life and which has a certain zest, or swagger. ‘ Beth is vulnerable and broken, but her strong voice keeps the momentum of the novel alive, even when her hope wains.

As well as her experience of working in secondary schools and its insight into the impact of family background, Clare spent a great deal of time researching prisons, the care system and trauma, and as well as speaking with researchers visited a women’s prison, ‘which was enormously eye-opening and helpful.’ It’s not an easy book to research and write, but Clare is lucky that her home city of Leeds scene is hugely supportive of writers and artists. ‘I can’t even imagine who I would be if I didn’t read or write; both activities have hugely improved my knack for listening and noticing and asking questions – all of which make for an enriched life.’ And a deep story. A story of hope.

‘You might think I’m retarded for hoping such a thing in the light, or rather the dark, of everything that’s happened.’ she writes. There’s always light and dark, always a past and a future, always action and inertia. There’s always people. There’s always life. It’s messy and chaotic and broken and confusing yet beautiful. Filled with bad things – but a lot of good.

Published in hardback by Viking on 1st June 2017, priced £12.99.