A big thank-you to the two readers who supported the charity Young Lives vs. Cancer, also known as CLIC Sargent, by bidding to have their names included in the novel. Robyn Grant and Rubye Raye; your generous donations mean more than I can say, and I hope you like your characters.
Huge and heartfelt thanks to my fabulous agent, Eve, and her brilliant assistants Ludo and Steven, and many, many individual thank-yous to the small army of people who have supported this book behind the scenes at Simon & Schuster in the UK, US, and Canada, and at my publishers in other languages and abroad. To Alison, Jen, Suzanne, and Nita, I am thankful every day for your joint editorial brilliance and the faith you’ve shown in me and my characters. And to Ian, Jessica, Sydney, Sabah, Katherine, Taylor, Adria, Maeve, Felicia, Kevin, Mackenzie, Gill, Dom, Nicholas, Hayley, Sarah, Harriet, Matt, Francesca, Jennifer, Aimee, Sally, Abby, Anabel, Caroline, Jaime, John Paul, Brigid, and Lisa—I owe each and every one of you a huge debt of gratitude for helping to shepherd this book out into the world, and for introducing it to readers. It is infinitely better （not to mention far prettier） than it was when I first typed “the end,” and I will never stop being grateful for the care and attention you lavish on my imaginary creations.
Love and kisses to my family—you had nothing to do with this book apart from giving me the space to write it—but you make the nonwriting parts of my day so much more fun than they would be otherwise.
Finally, to my readers—and in particular you, the person reading these words right now—this book literally exists because of you, and I thank each and every one of you.