Missing Pieces: The Pictures of Fear Collection

Charlotte just has to grit her teeth and hang on for another few weeks of misery at the school she hates before she’ll be free. All she has to do is pass her A-level exams and ace her audition to the Royal Academy, and she’ll escape from her ordinary life on the bleak Skelditch estate and become the concert violinist she’s always dreamed she could be.

She tries to look pleased when her parents give her a personalised jigsaw as one of her eighteenth birthday gifts. But the fact that it depicts a year-group photo from the school she hates only proves how clueless they are about her life. Still, fitting the pieces together late at night does help to distract her from the stress of the upcoming exams.

That is, until she discovers that the jigsaw has a strange power – one that she’s tempted to use to get her revenge on all the school bullies who have made her life miserable. But soon, Charlotte finds that terrible acts have terrible consequences. Can she escape the ghastly karma of her actions before it’s too late?

Missing Pieces is the third sinister short story in the Pictures of Fear collection, written by award-winning author Victoria Williamson and available to purchase as an anthology.