When I moved to Switzerland in 2013 I didn’t really know what to expect, beyond the clichés. Over the years since then I’ve discovered a country that is as quirky as it is beautiful, with a fascinating history, diverse culture and a unique political system. Just like anywhere, there are great things about it and some not so great things. I decided to write about two contentious aspects of Swiss history – women’s rights and child placements – firstly because they interested me, and secondly because I felt they were important issues that perhaps weren’t so well known outside the country. While the historical context in this novel is, to the best of my knowledge, accurate, the characters and plot are entirely fictitious. Evelyne’s Mouvement des Femmes Lausannoises is my creation, though it reflects the aims of real women’s liberation groups in Switzerland at the time. The character of Anna is also invented, but her childhood is informed by the documented experiences of the many thousands of children who, until as late as 1981, were subjected to compulsory welfare measures by a government attempting to control people it considered to be living morally unacceptable lives. However, I do not intend to reflect any particular individual experience. There were women who preferred not to have the vote, just as there were many who fought hard for further rights; there were children who had positive experiences of being placed away from their families, just as there were those who suffered far more hardship than my character Anna did. I have also fictionalised certain events, and occasionally changed the name of a place or building for narrative purposes.

Acknowledgements

Researching the historical context of this story was a fascinating task. Particularly helpful regarding the women’s liberation movement in French-speaking Switzerland was Julie de Dardel’s book Révolution sexuelle et Mouvement de libération des femmes à Genève (1970–1977) and the documentary Debout! by Carole Roussopoulos. My research into the history of child placements in Switzerland was informed by an exhibition in Le Locle in 2017 and the book Enfants placés, enfances perdues by Marco Leuenberger and Loretta Seglias. Thank you to Loretta for meeting with me and answering the many extra questions I had. For the book’s UK narrative, Liz Hodgkinson’s Ladies of the Street: The Women who Transformed Journalism helped me understand the experience of women in Fleet Street before, during and after the 1970s. Thanks also to Shirley Conran for allowing me to use quotes from her era-defining book Superwoman.