Please visit evacarter.net today for more information – it’ll only take a few minutes to learn the basics of hands-only CPR and discover follow-up first-aid courses in your area.

Acknowledgements and Further Reading

This book has been a labour of love, and also a research-hungry monster, so if I forget to include someone, I apologize in advance!

On the research front, I especially want to thank Sue Hampshire of Resuscitation Council UK, Dr Tom Keeble, Leigh Keeble, Kate Kennedy, Carli Poxon, Cath Quinn, Dr Harriet Sanders, Chris Solomons, Pete Sortwell, Dr Stuart Strachan, Mark Wendruff and members of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest UK Facebook group, set up by the inspirational Paul Swindell. I recommend their site and podcast to anyone affected: www.suddencardiacarrestuk.org. Any errors that might have slipped through are down to me . . .

If you want to know more about how medics and other first responders are affected by their work, I really recommend Also Human by Caroline Elton, Direct Red by Gabriel Weston and Seven Signs of Life by Aoife Abbey.

I want to thank my many creative allies, especially Angela Clarke, Julie Cohen, Rowan Coleman, Miranda Dickinson, Araminta Hall, Stephanie Lam, Jill Mansell, Janie Millman, Tamsyn Murray, Jane Lythell, Sarah Rayner, Cally Taylor, Phil Viner, Laura Wilkinson, Mickey Wilson, Andrew Wille and Araminta Whitley.

Huge thanks to my agents Hellie Ogden and Allison Hunter at Janklow & Nesbit for the brilliant editorial input and cheerleading. Also shout-outs to Kate Longman and Rebecca Carter, Ellis Hazelgrove, Kirsty Gordon, Kate Longman, Zoe Nelson and Emma Winter.

I’m incredibly lucky to have Sam Humphreys as my amazing editor at Mantle – I’d read and loved many books she’s edited and it’s been a thrill to have her thoughtful and incisive input as we worked together on the book (with Hilary Teeman, my American editor, as the third musketeer). Thanks to everyone else at Mantle, including Elle Gibbons, Alice Gray, Kate Tolley, Ami Smithson, Rosie Wilson and Natalie Young.

Now to the hands-on research I’d rather not have done. Two friends dropped everything when the worst happened, despite new jobs and impossibly long drives: Geri and Jenny, you are life-savers. Also, thanks to the Kitties for online emergency services . . .

Big love to my sister, Toni, and my dad, Michael.

All the love to Richard, for proving that two birthdays a year are much better than one.

My mum died shortly before I finished this book. But its origins lie in the gleeful stories she told about life as an A&E nurse from the 1960s onwards, and her passion for reading. We sent How to Save a Life out to publishers on the date of her birthday. I think she would have enjoyed the serendipity of that.