I sometimes look back and wonder how I managed to write this book. For most of the years it took me to write it, I was juggling a day job with bringing up young children. I was also learning how to write, which any author knows is a dispiriting experience, the words on the page never matching the brilliant thing we hold in our head. The answer is, I drew on the support around me, and there was a lot of it. I couldn’t have kept going without the people who helped and encouraged me, and I’m enormously grateful to them all.
In particular, I want to thank the friends, family, and colleagues who read the early drafts and gave kind and helpful feedback, even when those drafts were slightly dreadful. Thanks to Sheila Pallier, Charlotte Spencer, Catherine Rose, Nicki Bowman, Ed Elias, Emily Elias, Sam Dodd, Tilly Wright, Kit Hui, and the Faber Academy gang, and, of course, my most steadfast writing buddy, Francesca Jakobi. My thanks go out also to the talented teachers I was lucky to work with: Marian Husband, Edward Docx, Debi Alper, Emma Darwin, Esther Freud, and Stephen Carver.
Huge thanks to my multitalented agent, Nicola Barr, who helped me to hone my story into the book I was trying to write all along and who took it out into the world with such energy. Many thanks also to Amelia Hodgson and the rest of the team at The Bent Agency for their ongoing support.
Thank you to my brilliant editors, Suzie Dooré in the UK and Kate Nintzel in the US, for their belief in The Silence and their considerable skill in bringing out its potential. Thanks to Ore Agbaje-Williams, Rachel Quinn, Simeon Greenaway, Vedika Khanna, Ploy Siripant, Liate Stehlik, Jennifer Hart, Gena Lanzi, Molly Waxman, Jeanie Lee, and the rest of the team at HarperCollins for their part in designing, producing, and raising the profile of the book. Many thanks also to Caroline Ast of Belfond and to Ilaria Marzi of HarperCollins Italia, for the wonderful French and Italian editions.
I’m grateful to Nadia Hanafi and Philippe Kerampran for their kind support with my author website, to Jon Bent for his input to the Author’s Note, to Barb Taylor and Alecia Bof for their help during the final edits, to Charlie at Urban Writers’ Retreat for her faultless hospitality, and to Alistair at Rye Books for sourcing me so many inspirational novels over the years. Thanks to the other three corners of the Book Square for knowing when to ask how the book was going and when to change the subject. Thanks to Writerful Books for the sensitivity read, and also to Stephen Buckley for his generous insight on the more sensitive sections of the book.
Thanks to Dad and Gillie for reading the early drafts and being so positive and encouraging. Thanks to Mum for reading and for helping in so many other ways, and for always believing I could do it. Thanks to my sister, Sarah, for being fabulous and for her ground-level marketing efforts. And thanks, of course, to my amazing children who can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing this book, and who have been my proud champions at each step of the way.
Finally, thanks beyond measure to my husband, David, who has always understood and encouraged my need to write. The Silence has benefited from his “very Australian” perspective, not to mention his eagle eye for continuity errors. I doubt it would have been written at all without his love and support, or his willingness to give me the space and time I needed.
I should finish by saying that among the many resources I used to research this book, the National Library of Australia’s excellent website was the most useful and exhaustive. I returned again and again to their oral history section, which is keeping alive the experiences of people whose voices might not otherwise have been heard. I’ve tried to do justice to those experiences within the limits of this work of fiction. Any errors or inconsistencies are entirely my own.