Torn

Episode 1

One, Two, Three

46 mins

The series begins in 1996 with a married couple, Sarah (Holly Aird) and David (Adam Kotz) Hooper, going to a busy beach on a bank holiday weekend with their young children Alice (Jo Woodcock), Jasmine (Emma Natasha Miles) and Sean (Owen Donovan). After some time Alice is accidentally left alone and vanishes when her father goes to get ice cream and her mother fails to hear him tell her to watch her and presumes she is with him. A frantic search fails to yield any results, and Alice is presumed dead by drowning and is remembered through a commemoration plaque near the beach. The series then moves forward eleven years, with Sarah refusing to believe her daughter is dead. Whilst in a shopping centre several miles away from her home, she sees a girl who she believes is remarkably similar in appearance to Alice, and faints with shock. She later tells her husband, who maintains that Alice is dead and refuses to entertain Sarah's theories. Sarah returns to the centre, and after several hours of waiting, finds the girl again and follows her to her flat on an estate. The following day Sarah returns to the estate where she confronts the girl and her stepfather Stephen Turner (Bradley Walsh), and after a physical altercation is arrested. She receives a caution on the premise that she is not to approach the girl or the family again. Sarah, however, is determined that the girl (revealed to be called Lori) is actually Alice, and the depth of her belief appeals to D.S. Sally Bridges (Poppy Miller) who takes up the case. She visits the Turner household where she sees photos allegedly of Lori as a baby and, on the way out, meets Lori and her mother Joanne Taylor (Nicola Walker) who reveals she has finally relented and let her daughter get a tattoo on her upper right arm. Thinking this overcompensation for the "ordeal", Bridges asks Sarah if Alice had any distinguishing marks and is told she had a small birthmark on her arm, supposedly in the same place as the tattoo on Lori. With this information, Bridges returns to the Turner/Taylor home and requests a birth certificate and, after to failing to provide one, Joanne breaks down revealing she kidnapped Alice back in 1996 after becoming depressed having found that she was not able to have children.