Author’s Note

This story is inspired by true events.

The death mask of L’Inconnue de la Seine exists. Hundreds of copies once hung from hundreds of walls across Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Nabokov really did write about L’Inconnue, and so did Rilke. Albert Camus compared her to the Mona Lisa. You can still purchase a copy of the mask from a dusty atelier in the southern suburbs of Paris.

The mask – or rather, the unknown woman who (may have) drowned in the Seine in 1890-something and whose absence defines its contours – has a knack for getting people’s attention.

Something else: there was a Norwegian toymaker called Asmund Laerdal. In the 1950s, Laerdal was a successful manufacturer with an advanced knowledge of soft plastics who designed a lifelike play doll named Anne. He also designed toy cars, and imitation wounds for the Norwegian Civil Defence.

True: Asmund Laerdal had a son named Tore. When Tore was two years old, he nearly drowned. Laerdal saved his son’s life before he knew anything about artificial respiration. Tore Laerdal still lives in Norway.

In 1958, Asmund Laerdal was introduced to a research team made up of Peter Safar, an anaesthesiologist, and the physician James Elam. Safar and Elam were conducting studies on the efficacy of mouth-to-mouth cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the US, in Baltimore. They needed a manikin to continue their research, and to use as a training aid to teach CPR to the general public.

Asmund Laerdal, adept with the necessary materials and branded with the memory of what he nearly lost to the water, designed the life-saving manikin using the deathmask of L’Inconnue de la Seine for her face. He called her Resusci Anne and since her inception in 1960, this face has not changed. Hundreds of millions of people have wrapped their lips snugly around hers, given her their breath. Perhaps, so have you.

Everything else in this book: invention.

Acknowledgements

Thank you Clare Alexander, my secret weapon, and all of you at Aitken Alexander.

Thank you to my editors Alice Youell and Michelle MacAleese, for your faith and enthusiasm, and thank you to the wonderful teams at Doubleday UK and House of Anansi. Thank you especially to Sarah MacLachlan, Marianne Velmans, Claire Gatzen, Vivien Thompson, Alison Barrow and Antonia Whitton.

With all my heart, thank you Jo Willacy, Alison Brockway and Libby Anderson for allowing me into your unique world. I hope I got it right, or at least as close as possible to right.

Thank you so very much to Loic Boinet, Isabelle Gaultier and everyone at Atelier Lorenzi. Thank you also to Josephine Duval and Virginie Borsa.

For explaining the medical bits and your patience in doing so, thank you to Anna Bendzsak, Stephen Tsui, Alexandra Lamond and James Napier.

Thank you to my petits choux, Stevie Anouk Lindell and Camille Avarello Stone.

Thank you to the readers, and to the writers, who graciously shone their bright light into the corners I couldn’t see: Merrill Brescia and Colleen Anderson, Joanna Quinn and Peggy Riley.