First, as always, a huge thank you to my agent, Lina Langlee, for getting me through another book and listening to the usual complaining and whining that accompanies every first draft, this time with added Long Covid (mine not hers). Always grateful for you, Lina.
Also, everyone at the North Literary Agency for all their hard work, especially the foreign rights agents who sell my books all over the place, including countries I have to look up on a map!
Thank you to everyone at Aria/Head of Zeus for another beautiful book package, but especially my editor Martina Arzu, Helena Newton who has copy-edited most of my books (not too many mistakes this time, I must be learning) proof-reader Jane Howard, and Leah Jacobs-Gordon who designed the cover.
This was one of the most fun books I’ve ever written and incorporated many of my favourite things – old houses, unsolved mysteries, sibling relationships, social class, and my favourite Shakespeare play. Like Viola, I first saw Twelfth Night when I was fourteen and have never forgotten it. My dad took me to the Barbican where Richard Briers was playing Malvolio, and it was perfect. A lifelong love of the playwright began on that Saturday afternoon and I am ever grateful to my dad for that.
The ideas that shaped Haverford House came from a lifetime of love for old houses but the books that helped me make it seem real include: The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood, 1930s Britain by Robert Pearce, The Story of the Country House by Clive Aslet, and English Country Houses by Vita Sackville-West.
Thanks as always to my husband – my beta reader, proofreader, harshest critic and greatest support. Nine books now! On to the tenth.
Finally, a huge hug to my little brother to whom this book is dedicated. He is the Linus to my Lucy and I couldn’t have written Sebastian and Viola without him.