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Back Because She Loves Me Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Ninteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Epilogue
  48. Letter From the Author
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the Author

So when I thought about what was most physically terrifying to me, and what I could inflict upon my character, the answer was obvious.

Secondly, there has been my experience of jealousy. When I was at university I had a girlfriend who made my life hell because a green-eyed monster lived inside her. She accused me of fancying every woman I met; she got angry if an attractive woman appeared on TV; she demanded that I break off contact with my female friends. Going into a lecture, I squirmed and sweated if a good-looking girl sat next to me, in case my girlfriend found out. Being a nineteen-year-old idiot, I let her get away with it for quite a long time before the relationship burned itself out.

Years later, I lived with a woman who wasn’t jealous but who told me, after I broke my leg and was trapped in our upstairs flat for weeks (yes, just like Andrew), that this situation made her happy. ‘I like knowing exactly where you are all the time,’ she said. ‘And what you’re doing.’

And I have experienced jealousy myself. I know what it feels like when that darkness takes over and devours good sense, filling you up with paranoid rage and fear. It’s the most irrational and nasty emotion and I’m happy to say it hasn’t afflicted me for a long time.

All of this combined to make me want to write a book about sexual jealousy and how destructive it can be. And, of course, that original idea grew into something much darker . . .

This book is a kind-of companion piece to The Magpies, in which I focused on neighbours from hell, exploring the idea that the real monsters are not vampires or demons but the people who live next door. In Because She Loves Me, I wanted the terror to be even closer to home. But this time, with a twist. The main challenge of this book was making everything ambiguous, so there are at least two possible explanations for everything that happens. I hope you didn’t guess it but if you did, let’s hope I can get you next time!

Finally, anyone who has read The Magpies will have noticed that Lucy from that book gets a few mentions in this one. Lucy is hated by many, but to a large degree she has lived in the shadows of my books, never fully revealing herself. I am sure she will surface in future work – and maybe we’ll get to see a lot more of her. I think she still has a lot of havoc to wreak . . .

Thanks again for reading.

Best wishes

Mark Edwards

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my very cool and beautiful wife, Sara, for reading this book first and helping me make it a lot better, including coming up with the lost property idea.

To Michele Knight and Anne Coates for helping out with my questions about aura reading.