I’d like to thank everyone at Corvus Atlantic Books, particularly my editor Sara O’Keeffe for her amazing insight and Susannah Hamilton for her guidance. Thank you all for believing in me and Caroline. The whole team is so wonderful and an absolute pleasure to work with, I am so lucky.

None of this would have been possible without my friend and agent Judith Murray, who saw Caroline for who she really is and helped me to shape Perfect Ten in the early drafts. Thank you for all the advice, the encouragement and the apricot soufflé – you have changed my life. Thank you to everyone at Green and Heaton for your warm welcome.

Thank you so much to the Refuge and Women’s Aid, the domestic violence charities. I already understood domestic violence through my work, but my further research for this book uncovered dedicated professionals who struggle daily with communicating the complexity of abuse. To those people, thank you for making a difference.

I simply cannot list all the fellow writers who have helped me over the years as the list would be too long. But thank you all for examples of persistence and success. In particular, big love to Anstey Spraggan, who has relentlessly listened to me almost every day since we met at a book launch ten years ago. I’m also grateful to my friends Bridget Davison and Lindsay Bowes for early readings of the finished manuscript and their comments. Also to Elinor Davies, who was enthusiastic about Caroline’s story and listened endlessly.

Massive thanks to my family. To my mum. Whilst she entered the world of dementia and we waited in the memory clinic, we amused ourselves with ‘woman number 9’ and tried to imagine all the revenge scenarios that a someone could have been in. You are there, mum, in those pages – this is for you.

To my children, Michelle, Victoria and Toby, thank you for your love and encouragement to have the confidence to write. To my brothers who are a constant in an ever-changing world. To my grandchildren, Evan, Leah, Lincoln and Phoenix – you are amazing.

I could not have achieved any of this without my partner, Eric Bourdiec. Eternal thanks for your advice on ‘reining in the crazy’, your support, your love and your cups of tea.