Acknowledgements

The list of people and institutions that have been helpful to me, generous with advice and support in all kinds of ways, is a long one, and I must apologise in advance for leaving anyone out. They include: Creative Scotland for financial support; the National Trust for Scotland; the beautiful Burns Birthplace Museum and Burns Cottage (with special thanks to Rebecca McCallum Stapley and Nat Edwards); the excellent Burns House Museum in Mauchline; the equally atmospheric and excellent Ellisland Farm with its uniquely knowledgeable curator, Les Byers; Friar’s Carse Hotel, where the Riddells once lived; Robert Burns House in Dumfries; the Globe Inn, also in Dumfries (and especially Jane Brown); Scotland’s People; Aberdeen University Library for helpful information about John Moir; the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University; members of the Ayrshire Association of Businesswomen; the National Library of Scotland; and the Carnegie Library in Ayr.

Individual friends and acquaintances who have made the project much easier than it might otherwise have been include: the Rev David Albon and Hugh Brown of the Church of Scotland in Mauchline; the Rev Gerald Jones in Kirkmichael; Professor Alan Riach; Dr Valentina Bold; Nigel Deacon; Elinor Clark at Rozelle for kindly showing me the Moir portrait and the shawls; Elizabeth Kwasnik; old friends and dedicated Burns fans John and Brenda Kevan; the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow; and Dr Sarah Learmonth for information about endocarditis and oral infection.

Thanks are due to Liam Brennan and Gerda Stevenson for ‘being Rab and Jean’ in my play Tam o’ Shanter, for BBC Radio 4, and to Liam for reciting the poem in exactly the right accent; also to Donald Pirie, who was an utterly convincing Rab on stage at the Òran Mór, and to Clare Waugh, for being my definitive Jeany.

The project would have been much harder to complete without Alison Bell’s inspirational and comforting chats over coffee and scones. Thanks too, to long-time friend and advice-giver Oenone Grant, to Valerie Laws and Chris Longmuir of Authors Electric, Carol Speirs of Many Thanks in Mauchline, writer friends Helena Sheridan, Fiona Atchison, Lesley Deschner and Janice Johnston, and all my many other Ayrshire friends and colleagues.

Huge thanks must go to my publisher, Sara Hunt, to Jenny Hamrick and Heather McDaid for editorial and proofreading, and to all at Saraband for support, inspiration and patience.

Finally, love, as ever, to my long-suffering husband Alan Lees, my son Charles and my dear late mum and dad who patiently and enthusiastically endured a great many weekends trekking and driving about Ayrshire and Dumfries with a poet-obsessed daughter.

This novel is dedicated, with love and respect, to the real Jean, with whom I seem to have lived and worked intensively for so many years.

By night, by day, a-field, at hame,

The thoughts o’ thee, my breast inflame

And aye I muse and sing thy name –

I only live to love thee.