Her book is a grieving mother's attempt to understand and find expression for her daughter's suicide. In certain parts, it resembles a psychological autopsy, where she embarked on this quest to question her daughter's schoolmates, friends, teachers and school counsellor, and combed through Victoria's diaries and computer, where she'd kept a journal - to answer that irresistible, "Why". And that process of excavating and uncovering her daughter's hidden doubts, emerging sexuality, despair, self-cutting, and suicidal thoughts was excoriating.

There were the inevitable recriminations and guilt: "How could we have been so blind to this? Why did Victoria not tell us?… We could have saved her," wrote Ms Collins, who is a copy-editor with The Straits Times, of her much-loved daughter. She agonised about respecting Victoria's privacy and not prying into her diaries which could have alerted her to her suicidal thoughts.