It took me seven years to write Pao. The second novel in these three interlinked books, Gloria, took two and a half years. As did this current work. So this is the end of a very long journey. Three books, three lives, three quests for redemption. But one story, one island, one love.
Thank you to Helen Garnons-Williams for reading and scrutinising draft after draft. Fresh and enthusiastic like each time was the first. Thank you for being so smart, unremitting, patient and kind. I know how lucky I am to have had you as my editor these past years.
Thanks also to Sarah-Jane Forder, the most lovely of copyeditors. And to all at Bloomsbury, especially Alexa von Hirschberg. My agent, Sophie Lambert at Conville & Walsh. Thank you for being there for me, by my side and on my side.
Thank you Amanda Harrington for your friendship, support and encouragement every page of the last fourteen years. May Whyte for your love and affection. And my family – Donna, Shelly, Sebastian, Pru, Wain and Sally – who continue to put up with me in all my weird and wonderful ways.
Most of all, thank you to my mom for loving and believing in me.
I have drawn on many different sources during the writing of this book, most notably the following: Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings by Thomas Aquinas, selected and translated by Timothy McDermott (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008); The Shopkeepers: Commemorating 150 Years of the Chinese in Jamaica 1854–2004 by Ray Chen (Periwinkle Publishers Ltd, Jamaica, 2005); Rise and Organise: The Birth of the Workers and National Movements in Jamaica 1936–39 by Richard Hart (Karia Press, London, 1989); and Time for a Change: Constitutional, Political and Labour Developments in Jamaica and Other Colonies in the Caribbean Region 1944–55 by Richard Hart (Arawak Publications, Kingston, 2004). I have also referred to other classic texts, including Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The epigraph is from St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, question 96, article 4.