The Chemist’s Son

A forgotten ruin beneath a London chemist’s shop. A tragic summer. A memoir that may—or may not—be true.

London, 1963. Beneath a modest pharmacy on Carter Lane, not far from St Paul’s Cathedral, teenage twins John and Jane Mills make a haunting discovery: an ancient Roman ruin hidden beneath their father’s shop. What begins as innocent curiosity soon spirals into something much darker—violence, incest, child abduction, and death.

Their father, Mr William Mills, a widowed and respectable chemist, is unaware—or unwilling to see—the horror growing in his own cellar.

Decades later, in 2006, freelance journalist Martine Patterson uncovers a half-forgotten memoir written by the now-adult John. In it, he recounts the strange and tragic events of that summer. But as she investigates further, Martine begins to suspect that the truth may be more twisted, and more terrifying, than John ever admitted. Was it the fevered imagination of a traumatized boy—or is something older, more malevolent, still waiting beneath the stones?

A chilling psychological mystery where the lines between time, memory, and madness blur, The Chemist’s Son explores the lingering consequences of buried secrets.