ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I always think, this next book will be easier, and I’m always impressively wrong: that it exists at all is down to the following people. I owe more to them than I can say.

To Ellen Holgate, my editor at Bloomsbury, and Claire Wilson, my agent, I owe my greatest thanks. Both are endlessly sharp-eyed and sharp-minded, and wildly generous; they have been the two greatest strokes of luck in my professional life.

To everyone at Bloomsbury, and in particular Fliss Stevens, for wrestling with the labyrinthine entity that this text became.

To everyone at Simon & Schuster USA, for such discerning editing and for making Vita’s walks through New York geographically plausible.

To my big brother, for being such an unfailingly kind reader, and for pointing out my near-clinical addiction to the Oxford comma. To my mother and father, for everything and for always.

To the wonderful community of children’s writers in the UK, and especially Cat Doyle, Abi Elphinstone, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Ross Montgomery, Lauren St John, Piers Torday, Katherine Woodfine and Katie Webber.

To my gang of young readers, who made superb suggestions and were far kinder about the book than I had any right to hope for.

To Cerrie Burnell, who read the manuscript early: I am enormously indebted to her kindness. To Tlotlo Tsamaase and Marcus Ramtohul, who acted as perceptive and generous sensitivity readers.

To Dmitri Levitin, for acting as my Russian authority; Max McGuinness, my New York specialist, and Jeremy Seysses, who ensured that the wine my villain drinks is of the best possible vintage.

To the trapeze teachers at the Gorilla Circus Flying Trapeze School, who taught me to spin upside down by the knees.

And to Charles Collier, who walked with me over a hundred miles of countryside, talking about stolen gems and unruly children, and who told me so much about the story that I did not know.