The thought, ‘I’m going to be in so much trouble’, has never been far away while I’ve been writing this book. That thought has stopped me before, as it was meant to. Perhaps what I’ve written will explain to those who know me why, on occasion, I have behaved in ways they couldn’t understand, been unable to do things I should have jumped at, sought solitude at inconvenient times, and so on . . . Thank you for the support you weren’t aware you were giving.
Franc’s ‘encouragement’ stopped me from writing for years. Whenever I tried I found I couldn’t. The encouragement and friendship of those around me were what got me started again. Thank you for persevering.
I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my agent, Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann, who, when I came up with the idea, completely understood why I felt it was an important book to write and has been tireless in keeping my spirits up.
I send an equally enormous bundle of thanks to Georgina Morley at Macmillan who, in addition to being an utterly brilliant human being, had an instinctive grasp for what I was trying to do – I could not have wished for a better editor.
A lifetime of love and thanks go to Daughters Numbers 1, 2 and 3. Decades of the same go to ‘Nina’ and ‘Lizzie’. You know who you are.
Paul Trueman gets a special mention and a big slice of cake for setting up the ‘Helen Titchener (née Archer) Rescue Fund’ and for being my Twitter friend.
The cast and scriptwriters on The Archers shone a spotlight into a dark corner of many women’s lives and I wouldn’t have written this without them.
To my friends at Refuge, Women’s Aid and SafeLives, ‘thank you’ seems a very small word for all you have done and continue to do.
And finally, to any woman who has had similar experiences to those I have described – this book is for you.