Acknowledgements

I wrote most of this novel in the high, wet hills of Derbyshire and rewrote it on the New York Subway mostly back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn. If coffee and cake called, then bits of it got rewritten in the back room of Ceci Cela at Spring and Lafayette in Little Italy. Hence I think it fitting that I should acknowledge the witting assistance of . . . Zette Emmons and Sarah Teale (roof over my head), Gordon Chaplin (desk space), John Fagan and Linda Shockley (unflagging encouragement), Frank Lawton (whizzes and bangs), Clare Alexander, Ion Trewin and Anna Hervé (tweaks and turns) . . . and the unwitting assistance of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority and the blokes who run Ceci Cela . . . Herve, Laurent et Dominic – and waitresses with the patience of saints.