Her words translate into something else entirely inside my ears.
Happy family. Happy family. Happy family.
I smile at them all then, because I’ve finally got what I always wanted.
Acknowledgments
Books are a bit like children for authors; you’re not really allowed to have a favorite, but I am rather fond of this one. I wouldn’t have been able to write it without the following amazing people in my life.
Forever thank you to my agent, Jonny Geller, for taking a chance on me and always knowing the right thing to say. Agenting is a funny business, and far more complex than I ever imagined. It requires one person to perform many roles: reader, editor, manager, therapist, surrogate parent, boss, and friend. Thank you for being so good at all of them.
Amazing agents are rare, so I feel incredibly lucky to have more than one. If Mary Poppins had decided to become a literary agent, she would be Kari Stuart at ICM. Thank you to Kari for being （actually, not practically） perfect in every way. Thank you to Kate Cooper and Nadia Mokdad for selling my books around the world. Thanks to these two brilliant women, stories written in my little shed have been translated into more than twenty languages. It is nothing less than magic, and I’m so grateful. Thank you to everyone else at Curtis Brown, the best agency in town, with special thanks to Ciara Finan.
Thank you to Josie Freedman and Luke Speed for making a dream I didn’t even dare dream come true. Because of them, I get to see my characters come to life on-screen. Thank you to Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ellen DeGeneres, and Robin Swicord for believing in my debut novel. It’s been a real roller-coaster ride and very exciting.
Publishers come in all shapes and sizes, and I’m so grateful to be working with the best. Huge thanks to Manpreet Grewal, my editor extraordinaire. Editors don’t just edit—they do everything, and Manpreet is Wonder Woman. We’ll always have kitchen foil and ants in ice cream. Thanks also to Lisa Milton, Janet Aspey, Lily Capewell, Lucy Richardson, and the whole HQ team at HarperCollins. Thank you to the equally brilliant team at Flatiron Books in the United States, with extra special thanks to Christine Kopprasch （who I will always picture sitting in a tree while reading two books—because one is never enough!）。 Huge thanks also to Amy Einhorn, Conor Mintzer, Bob Miller, Nancy Trypuc, and Marlena Bittner. Thank you to all my other publishers around the world for taking such good care of my books.
Thank you to the booksellers and everyone else who has helped put my books into the hands of readers. Special thanks to Hatchards in London for a fairy-tale launch I will never forget, and to the Mysterious Bookshop in New York for making the first time I saw my books in America so magical. I spend most days in a shed with my dog and my laptop, so seeing my stories out in the world will never stop being special.
Writers are nothing without readers. Thank you to all the bloggers, bookstagrammers （I love seeing your pictures of the books）， librarians, book reviewers, and journalists who have been so kind about my novels. I hope you continue to enjoy my stories, and I’m forever grateful for your support. Special thanks to Brian Grant for being a wizard with a camera, and to Lee Fabry for all his advice about police procedure in the UK. Any mistakes are my own.
Thank you to my friends for being my family. This has been a difficult year for me, with a variety of grief so heavy it sometimes felt impossible to stand. Thank you to the people who pulled me up. You know who you are.
Last, but never least, thank you to Daniel—my first reader, my best friend, my best everything.