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Back Before My Actual Heart Breaks Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. 2007
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 1973
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. 6
  13. 1982
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
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  20. 13
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  27. 20
  28. 21
  29. 22
  30. 23
  31. 24
  32. 1998
  33. 25
  34. 26
  35. 27
  36. 2004
  37. 28
  38. 29
  39. 30
  40. 31
  41. 32
  42. 33
  43. 2007
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. Acknowledgements
  48. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

The touch of his lips and tongue went all the way to my toes, smoothing my frayed nerve endings as it went. I was going to burst my banks! My cup runneth over! Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life? I pushed against him, trying to grind his bones into mine. I wanted us to be one. I wanted us to have hard-fought peace in our day.

I wanted ‘us’ to just be us. I wanted us to be the ‘Song of Ruth’. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you dwell, I will dwell. Your people will be my people. And your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die. And there will I be buried beside you. We will be together forever, and our love will be the gift of our life. I breathed him in, I couldn’t not. He was mine and I was his. We belonged together. We’d found each other at last. When he held out his hand for me, I took it and let him lead me home. Love doesn’t make itself, y’know?

Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks are due to the writer Rachel Abbott without whose help, guidance and encouragement this book may never have reached the light of day. You’re a diamond!

Thanks are also due to my agent Lizzy Kremer for her invaluable advice and to my publisher Jocasta Hamilton who, together with Rose Waddilove, has been a pleasure to work with.

Add to them, my first readers: the poets Paul Paterson and Dr John Mackay. Number one god-daughter Ria Bradley, Liz Winters, Mary Bradley, Bernard McPhilemy, Patricia Bartlett, Jo Jordan, Christopher Rowley, Sarah Simpkins, Rosemarie Egan, Ann Hodgson, Clare Hanbury, Jane Margaret Crust, Lee Flewitt, Isabel Picornell, Jacqueline Gianelli, Ruth Hughes, Nor James, Tracy Bostian, Monica Lynch, Clare Evans, Jem Kathrens and Neil Paterson.

Penguin Random House

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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