There should really be a five-author credit for this book, because it wouldn’t have got finished without my amazing writing buddies, Kate Clarke, Lucy Smallwood Barker, Amy Hoskin and Clêr Lewis, who read endless drafts, brainstormed ideas and got me out of some very deep plot holes. You four are just the best – thank you doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Thanks to Jan Bhend, Sarah Giles, Ian Kirkpatrick and Julie Ball, who read early and frankly terrible drafts and gave me useful feedback; to Ollie Rice, my mentor and cheerleader for longer than either of us care to remember; to Sheila Saner from Riding for the Disabled, and Jo White, who helped me figure out how Nat might learn to ride; and to Dave Harris of Kent Fire and Rescue, for answering my hopelessly vague questions about how quickly a fire in a seventeenth-century house that he’d never seen might spread, and in which direction. And thanks to my friend John Garvie for the picture of Jeffrey Hudson that sat on my desk as inspiration while I wrote the book.
Thank you too to the people who made my story into this book: my super-smart editor Clare Hey, possibly the only person in the world who I could still like after they’d asked me to throw away 30,000 words and write new ones to replace them (she was right); my sharp-eyed and wise copy-editor Susan Opie; cover designer Emma Ewbank; proof reader Seán Costello; and all the team at Simon & Schuster, especially Marketing Director Hayley McMullan and Publicity Managers Jamie Criswell and Jess Barratt, who pushed Nat out in the world. And huge thanks to my fantastic agent, Alice Lutyens, for spot-on advice, irrepressible enthusiasm and especially for taking a punt on Nat, and me, before his story was even finished.
At the risk of this turning into an Oscar speech, thank you to my mum and dad, for giving me the love of reading that made me want to write, and to my teachers at St Angela’s Ursuline Convent School for Girls in Forest Gate, East London, especially Mrs Atherfold, Miss Turvey and Dr Betts, for showing me that being able to string a sentence together gives you more options in life than I’d ever imagined.
Last but definitely not least, thanks to my long-suffering husband, Mike Jeffree, for everything else.