Ivy woke up early the next morning. She crossed the living area, where people were still sleeping on the floor, opened the door a crack and slipped outside. What she saw there, through the mist drifting in the valley, turned her bones to ice. All the trees on the hills were hung with white. Later, walking about the village, Ivy would see the fallen blossoms everywhere, tiny stars stuck in the mud. But standing in the doorway, she didn’t realise at first that the rain had caused the trees to burst into flower. ‘When I saw all that white,’ said Ivy, ‘I thought of brides. I thought, They’ve killed all the brides and strung them up in trees.’

Why am I remembering this? It all happened a very long time ago, and Ivy hasn’t told the story in years.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the Literature Fund of the Australia Council, especially Lina Kastoumis; to the Copyright Agency and the English Department at the University of New South Wales, especially Anne Brewster; and to the English Department at the University of Sydney.

An enormous thank you to JeanPaul Péraldi for help with research, and to JeanPaul and Françoise for their kindness forty years ago. Thank you also to Adele Ferguson, Madeleine Kelly, Myles Neri, Eamonn O’Farrell-White and Mark Williams. Thank you to Roberta Trapè for help with Italian and for support over time.

Many thanks to the three wise women, Clare Drysdale, Jane Palfreyman and Pat Strachan, and their wonderful colleagues at Allen & Unwin and Catapult.

For books, conversation and the sense of being in something together, thank you to all my writer friends. To Neel Mukherjee, my gratitude for a generous letter as well. And to Fiona McFarlane, for her perceptive reading of the manuscript and for all the breakfasts at The General.

Thank you to all at Lutyens & Rubinstein, and many, many thanks to Sarah Lutyens for unfailing friendship and guidance over the years. And thank you most of all to Chris Andrews, my dearest reader.