First, I would like to thank my lovely agent, Anne Clark. I couldn’t ask for a better agent, and your commitment to this book has been wonderful. I am so lucky too to have brilliant editors in Stella Paskins and Liz Bankes at Egmont. Your skillful editing, enthusiasm, and excitement about the book have been amazing. Thank you to the whole team at Egmont! And thank you to the team at Sourcebooks, too, for all your work on the U.S. edition.
I am eternally grateful to all those people who took the time to answer my questions and to read the manuscript and give feedback at various stages. Any errors are my own and not the fault of anyone acknowledged here.
For help with cerebral palsy and AAC information, I am especially grateful to Jonathan Kaye, Ellie Simpson of CPTeens, and Debbie Simpson, Natasha Bello, Julie Bello, and Kate McCallum from 1Voice, Kate Caryer from Communication Matters and Unspoken Theatre, and Jenny Herd from Communication Matters. Thanks also to Carl Ritchie, Joan Ritchie, and Kevin Robinson who answered police-related questions for me.
From the Weizmann Institute, I would like to thank Lee Sela and Noam Sobel for answering many questions about their recently developed communication device.
I would not be the writer I am without fabulous City Lit, where I started out as a student and now teach. From there, I formed my own Friday writing workshop, with talented writers Jo Barnes, Angela Kanter, Vivien Boyes, and Derek Rhodes. Your constructive criticism and support have meant so much to me. I’d also like to thank my young adult beta readers, including those found for me by Janis Inwood, librarians at Southgate School, where I was educated, and Jessica Pliskin, whose excellent suggestion really helped.
My family—every one of you, I thank you for your support—and especially my husband, Adam, for all his love and for putting up with my mind being elsewhere a lot of the time (and for his helpful suggestion, gratefully received and ignored, that I should write about zombies). Final thanks go to our children, Michael and Zoe, to whom this book is dedicated. I know you are annoyed at not being old enough to read it yet—but you will be, one day, and I enjoy watching you grow so, so much.