Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editor, Jenna Gordon, and the whole team at VERVE Books, not only for loving this novel from the start, but for working with such care and attention to bring it to publication. It has been a joy to work with an editor who understood the characters as well as I did, and a team so committed to making the novel come alive.

Thank you to Elsa Mathern for capturing the essence of the book so beautifully and dynamically with this cover.

As always, I am grateful to my agent, Laura Macdougall at United Agents, who juggled my writerly hopes and dreams alongside a new baby – hello, Thea! – and to Olivia Davies, also of United Agents, whose initial prompt led to this book.

As I researched this novel, I made contact with writers whose knowledge of the history and culture of the period immediately after the First World War helped me immensely. Among them were Lucy Jane Santos, who gave me tips about early-twentieth-century make-up and shopping – and sent me down some delightful fashion website rabbit holes – and Jonathan Holmes, who shared his awesome knowledge of the music of that period.

The life of this book began exactly a hundred years after the date it is set, in March 2020. Writing it was my solace during the first Covid lockdown, undertaken mostly in the early hours of the morning, when, like many others, I was restless and awake. In the daytime, I was (again, like many others) trying to do my job via Zoom and simultaneously teaching a reluctant nine-year-old how to calculate percentages and use adjectives. So, I salute, in passing, my son’s teachers at King’s St Alban’s and my former colleagues at Worcester Cathedral.

I spent a lot of time during lockdown with my son, Sebastian, and my husband, Tim. I am always happy to be in their company, even though I was forced to watch far too many Marvel films in 2020. Tim, at least, was happy to engage in cocktail research during lockdown – which we decided was crucial to the novel.

This book is, in part, about female friendship. I am blessed with many wonderful friends whose laughter and good sense keep me going. In particular, I’m shouting out to Yvonne Pollitt, Sarah Henderson, Jenny Floyd, Elaine Wilmore, Hannah Persaud, Kay Garlick, Nikki Groarke and my cousin, Meriel Comley-Bull.

But this book is dedicated to two dear friends who know me almost more than I know myself, whose opinions matter greatly and with whom I have laughed and cried for many years: Faith Claringbull and Jane Tillier.