We say our goodbyes, exchanging emails, and I return to the chapel and rescue the bird, Hathor, from its box. She’s unhappy with me for having left her alone so long. I carry her outside and sit down, exhausted, among the gravestones. The sky is flushed pink and the sun is chasing the shadows away. I carefully unfold the bandages around the bird’s wing.

‘How’s that?’ I ask, setting her down on the ground.

She caws loudly at me but then hops away, flapping out her wing, ruffling the feathers. I decide it’s probably too early for her to fly and I move to pick her up again and rebandage her, but before I can, she flaps her wings and takes off into the air, rising higher and higher into the morning sky.

I stand up and watch her fly towards the sun.

Acknowledgements

This is my twentieth-something book and I would like to thank Amanda, my agent, who has shepherded every single one of them. I am indebted to you for your support.

I am grateful too to Mady, my film agent, who has also supported me for almost a decade now. We finally did it! My first adaptation is finally greenlit. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

When I think about my journey as an author the thing that strikes me most is that I had no creative writing background or knowledge before I started, not unless you count being an avid reader and watcher of movies and TV. And yet, what I did have was the confidence to try, cultivated in large part by my parents, and an attitude of fuck it, cultivated in large part by my husband and the advice of my brother-in-law: ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’. That advice has served me well (it also serves me as a storyteller when I’m trying to figure out what plot direction to go in).

I am lucky and blessed to have the support of my husband, John, and our daughter, Alula, as well as the encouragement and cheerleading of some amazing friends, most especially: Vic (always my first reader), Alby, Nichola, Rachel, Lauren and Clarissa.

Thanks also to Tessa, and my sister-in-law Sarah, for their medical knowledge and help with the details.

My least favourite parts of writing a book are the copy-edit and the proofing, so enormous thanks are due to Felicity Radford and Tony Russell for taking the hard work out of it and making it easy.

Finally, last but not least, I would like to thank the amazing team at Avon for their hard work and dedication. Molly, my editor, has an eagle eye and I so appreciated her skill. Also thanks to Helen Huthwaite, Ellie Pilcher, El Slater, Becci Mansell, Catriona Beamish, Sammy Luton, Hannah Avery and Elisha Lundin.

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