And if other women are getting a leg-up, then why shouldn’t she?

She picks up her mobile phone, and opens the app.

Nothing ridiculous, this time.

Nothing too far-fetched.

Something for her arse.

And maybe a little something for that flab of fat underneath her arms.

She will make the choice for herself, for who she wants to be.

She shall begin again.

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extras

Meet the Author

CLAIRE NORTH is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, a Carnegie Medal-nominated author whose debut novel was written when she was just fourteen years old. She has fast established herself as one of the most powerful and imaginative voices in modern fiction. Her first book published under the Claire North pen name was The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which became a word-of-mouth bestseller and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The follow-up, Touch, was described by the Independent as “little short of a masterpiece”. Her next novel, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, won the 2017 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and The End of the Day was shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. Her novel 84K received widespread critical acclaim and was described by bestselling author Emily St John Mandel as “an eerily plausible dystopian masterpiece”. She lives in London.

Find out more about Claire North and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

if you enjoyed

SWEET HARMONY

look out for

THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY

by

Claire North

A hauntingly powerful novel about how the choices we make can stay with us forever, by the award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K.

South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William.

William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

Gripping, moving, and thought-provoking, The Pursuit of William Abbey proves once again that Claire North is one of the most innovative voices in modern fiction.

Chapter 1

France, 1917

The truth-speaker was tall as a stretcher, thin as a rifle. He wore a black coat that stopped just above his knees, a tie the colour of drying blood, a black felt Derby hat and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles on a string. He carried a brown doctor’s bag in one hand, and a military-issue shoulder sack. Behind him the sky popped with cannon, the sound rolling in half a minute later like the wash of the sea. His curse can’t have been too near then, because he looked me in the eye and lied.