ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A little over ten years ago, my first novel had the good fortune to fall into the hands of Susanna Wadeson, editor at Doubleday. Since then our book output has grown in size, and so has our friendship. My thanks are, as always, to Susanna for her faith, wisdom, questions and dedication, and for giving me the freedom to write about the things that move me. This book is for you.

Thank you to my wonderful agent, Clare Conville, and all at Conville & Walsh. Thank you to Hazel Orme and Kate Samano and the copy-editing team, Cat Hillerton in production, Beci Kelly in art, Emma Burton and Lilly Cox in marketing, Oli Grant in audio, Laura Ricchetti and Natasha Photiou in international sales, Tom Chicken, Laura Garrod, Emily Harvey, Neil Green and Elspeth Dougall in UK sales. Thank you to Andrew Davidson for the exquisite illustrations. Thank you to Clio Seraphim and Kiara Kent and the entire Random House team. Thank you to those who championed Harold Fry all those years ago—Erica Wagner, David Headley, Cathy Retzenbrink, Fanny Blake—and have continued to be so generous over the years. Thank you for your unequivocal encouragement, Larry Finlay, and thank you, too, to Alison Barrow, because without your spark, guidance and friendship, none of this would be happening.

Thank you, as always, to my family, for your love. To Sarah Edghill, for casting an eye over an early draft of the first chapters of this book and having the courage to tell me it didn’t work. (She was right. I started again.) Thank you to Niamh Cusack for reading every one of my stories over many years, even the ones that were emails.

Thank you to my husband, Paul Venables. In truth, the thank-you is a private one. But Paul has been involved with my writing from the very start and I couldn’t do what I do without him. Sometimes it is good and right to shout about things like that.

Lastly, and above all, my thanks are both to the readers who have read with such kindness over the years—asking me questions that inspired more thinking, generously sharing their own stories—and the booksellers and librarians who kept getting books to us, even when we were all locked inside. The gate-keepers of reading. Where would we be without you?