This novel was born out of kindness from so many people. It was very difficult to write, and took a long time to write – if this list of gratitude seems long, it’s that a huge amount of help was needed.
I’m very grateful for friends who offered solidarity: Erinn, Lucy, Nafkote, Nadja, Yelena, Amanda, Albert, Marie, Mary, Raoul, Lauren, Samira, Alex, among so many more. Friends who in various ways gave me a place to stay – Spencer and Sabine, Nick, Andrew, Louis and Alex, Freya, and Danny (Danny in particular for the note that read ‘Rosa, don’t break anything’). I’m grateful for friends who were early readers – something which is a brave and thankless job (though I hope you know how thankful I am): Leila, Anna, Natalie, Lish, Lydia, Butch, David, Nancy, Minnie, Jethro, Lauren, Laura, Leah.
Leah, you once read Dreamland on your phone in eight hours making corrections as you went. It isn’t easy to be the partner of a writer – you do so with enormous grace, endless generosity, patience, light. Also: a truly beautiful ability to tell me when I’m being annoying, kindly. I love you, and thank you. I’m thankful for you every day. There is so much more I could say.
Louis and Steph; Ani, Sarah and Leila (again) – thank you for dear friendship, but also employment. This book wouldn’t exist without you.
I’m immensely grateful to the Society of Authors for their K Blundell Trust grant.
I’m grateful, and always will be, to Shakespeare and Company and the De Groot Foundation, without whom I might have gone more directly to my true calling – an estate agent. Seriously though, Sylvia, David, Linda, Laura, Krista, Adam: there is nowhere on earth like your bookshop. You have made a harbour.
I’m grateful to Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and the Lemon Tree House for residencies that changed the shape of my life, and ripple through everything that’s happened since.
Victoria Pepe, who published my first novel at Virago: this book had died when I emailed you and asked you to help edit. Thank you for punching it in the chest and bringing it back to life.
Thank you to Chris White for taking a chance on this book with such thoughtfulness, care and energy. You have been such a shining pleasure to work with. A huge thank you, too, to Kaiya Shang, Amy Fulwood, Becky McCarthy, Charlotte Chapman, and the rest of the team at Scribner. Thank you to Karolina Sutton for staying aboard during a seven-year-long roller-coaster ride/write that must have seemed painfully slow at points – thank you for helping shape this book, and taking it into the right hands. Thank you, too, to the rest of the brilliant team at Curtis Brown.
The screen print of AMAZING high up in a window on page 21, that’s by Charlie Evaristo-Boyce – be sure to check out his wonderful work.
Julia Mathison, that envelope was one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me.
Lastly, thank you to my parents for moving to Thanet. It was an unexpected move for me to follow you here, but I’m so glad I did. Thank you to my brilliant, brightly coloured mum for leading the way, in so many ways. Thank you to my kind and practical dad who read an early version of this book and said, ‘It’s okay, but you don’t know a thing about guns’ – and took me directly to a gun shop.
If you are reading this and you have not been to Thanet, come. It’s beautiful – as Davey says, ‘on a good day’, but not only on a good day. White chalk, pink cliff flowers, huge skies, bright sand, swimming when you’re brave enough. Come and see all the places like Dreamland, the Turner Contemporary, the Winter Gardens, the Shell Grotto, and all the beaches from Westgate to Pegwell. They are incredible.