‘What?’ she smiled.

‘. . . I think we should go for a walk.’

‘In the rain?’ Linus gasped, eyes shining at the contrariness of it.

‘Of course – this is the very best time,’ he said, cupping her head and kissing her again. He pulled away, his eyes burning brightly. Fiercely. ‘It reminds you you’re alive.’

Acknowledgements

My loyal readers will know I visit every location I write about, and I usually do enough research beforehand that I know what I want to see before I get there. This time, it was different. I have several good friends of Swedish descent and they’d shared enough stories over the years that I knew I wanted to set a book in Stockholm; it’s one of the coolest cities in the world, so young, so colourful, so techy . . . What I hadn’t expected was to fall in love with the wet, wobbly bit beside it, speckled with scattered crumbs of land. The archipelago was a revelation to me – it’s desolate, I’m sure, through the winter, but through the summer months, utterly stunning isolation! Grand old houses on rocky outcrops, regattas, pine forests, picnics and, of course, teeny tiny cabins. If you’ve read even one other of my books, then you’ll know I’m a sucker for a ramshackle hut, be it on a mountain, a fjord or a beach. I fell in love with the Swedish way of summering, feeling a genuine regret that this was not part of my own life story, and I really hope I’ve been able to impart some of its rustic purity and simplicity to you. If you can’t get there yourself, hopefully the story within these pages is a good second best.

Emil’s story was inspired by a real news story that seemed almost too good to be true. I looked into traumatic brain injuries further, and certainly such a recovery is sadly a freak rarity, bordering on the miraculous, but it is possible, and by then, my interest had been peaked with this thought: imagine waking up and finding yourself a stranger in your own life; everyone you loved has moved on . . . It’s chilling and tragic, and I honestly didn’t know how I was going to answer that question. However, my editor Caroline Hogg and agent Amanda Preston were both quick to see the appeal, keeping me calm when the collywobbles invariably set in and feeding back with observations and suggestions that really tightened up and refined the story. I honestly could not put a book out into the world without their eyes on it first. Thank you, both.

A huge debt is also owed to the Pan team at large – the copy- and sub-editors who tirelessly fine tune the details so that the story rings true and feels authentic; the marketing and advertising and comms teams who make sure that you get to know the book is out there; the sales teams who ensure it’s actually on bookshelves so that you can buy it; the art department who make sure you want to pick it up from the bookshelf when there’s a thousand other alternatives . . . you get the point. It really does take a village and I’m just so grateful that all these talented people are working on my side and not the competition’s!