‘Melinda, Melinda, you look pale and interesting. Perhaps a little too thin, but I am not complaining. Come in. I want to introduce you to a friend.’

She follows him into the main room, and there is Daniel Day-Lewis, sitting on the broken-backed sofa, wearing black cowboy boots.

He looks up from a script and says, ‘Hello.’

People talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; events take place one way and we recount them the opposite way.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

I owe everybody at Bloomsbury who has been involved with the production of this book a great debt. It is, of course, their job, but somehow publishing is not an ordinary job, involving as it does delicate judgements of all sorts and the tender egos of writers. I am deeply grateful to all, including – among many – Michael Fishwick, Alexandra Pringle, Katie Bond, Alexa von Hirschberg, Anna Simpson, Trâm-Anh Doan and Mary Tomlinson.

I have taken advice on banking and how it works, but I have decided not to name any of those I consulted.

Also, I would like to acknowledge the friendship with, and frankly, my dependency upon, my agent James Gill.

A Note on the Author

A Note on the Author

Justin Cartwright’s novels include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers, White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award, The Promise of Happiness, winner of the 2005 Hawthornden Prize, the acclaimed The Song Before It Is Sung, and, most recently, To Heaven by Water. Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and lives in London.

By the Same Author

By the Same Author

Interior

In Every Face I Meet

Masai Dreaming

Leading the Cheers

Half in Love

White Lightning

The Promise of Happiness

This Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited (non-fiction)

The Song Before It Is Sung

To Heaven by Water

Also Available by Justin Cartwright

Also Available by Justin Cartwright

TO HEAVEN BY WATER

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME

David Cross is surrounded by secrets. When his wife Nancy was alive he kept secrets from her and now that she is dead, he must hide his new happiness from his children, Lucy and Ed. But they too have their troubles: Ed's marriage is in trouble, Lucy is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend, and both worry that their father will find a new partner.

To Heaven by Water is a touching and hilarious portrait of a family trying to come to terms with loss in their own way.

‘His storytelling powers are so fluent and persuasive, the quality of his observation so fine’
DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘A delicately patterned novel about the heroic search for happiness and its ultimate fragility. The comfortable middle-class setting and faintly fairytale ending belie a portrait of family life in which concealment and compromise are never far away. Quietly moving’
FINANCIAL TIMES

‘A high-class piece of literary entertainment’
SPECTATOR

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