With thanks to . . .

– our early readers – Georgia Atkinson, Alice Kelly, Jodie Webster – and our later readers – Lisa Gorton, Christine Hinwood, Andrew McDonald, Georgia (again!), Lizzie Glickfeld, Andrea Verwey, Anna Beckhoff and Rebecca Brezzi – all of whom provided encouragement, coffee and brutal criticism when it was most required;

– our merry agent, Pippa Masson;

– our publisher Kristina Schulz and her team including Kristy Bushnell, Mark Macleod, Sarah Owen, Jo Hunt and Libby Volke;

– Arts Law for their advice;

– all the anonymous professionals who critiqued legal, police and medical documents we’d never actually encountered – any failures or omissions are entirely our own;

– Sunjay for his coffees, seedy porridge and for providing a room of one’s own at Kotch Lane for KFK;

– John and Peter and to our children, all seven of them, with love.