A Good Girl's Guide to Murder(109)
He looked back at Pip, his eyes shining, reaching for her. She drew forward to stand with him, leaning into the microphone to say her final lines.
‘But there was one final player in this story, Little Kilton, and it’s us. Collectively we turned a beautiful life into the myth of a monster. We turned a family home into a ghost house. And from now on we must do better.’
Pip reached down behind the lectern for Ravi’s hand, sliding her fingers between his. Their entwined hands became a new living thing, her finger pads perfect against the dips in his knuckles like they’d grown just that way to fit together.
‘Any questions?’
Acknowledgements
This book would have remained an abandoned Word document or an unexplored idea in my head if it weren’t for a whole list of amazing humans. Firstly, to my super-agent, Sam Copeland, it is incredibly annoying that you’re always right. Thank you for being so cool and calm, you’re the best person anyone could have on their team and I will be forever grateful that you took a chance on me.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder found its perfect home with Egmont and I’m so happy it did. To Ali Dougal, Lindsey Heaven and Soraya Bouazzaoui: thank you for your tireless enthusiasm, for seeing the heart of this story and for helping me to find it. Special thanks to my amazing editor, Lindsey, for guiding me through. To Amy St Johnston for being the first to read and champion the book; I’m so grateful you did. To Sarah Levison for her hard work whipping this book into shape and to Lizzie Gardiner for my beautiful cover design; I couldn’t have dreamed up one more perfect. To Melissa Hyder, Jennie Roman and to everyone in the marketing and publicity team: Heather Ryerson for the gorgeous proof, Siobhan McDermott for all her hard work at YALC and beyond, Emily Finn and Dannie Price for the genius YALC campaign and Jas Bansal for being the social media queen. And to Tracy Phillips and the rights team for an incredible job bringing this story to other parts of the world.
To my 2019 debut group for all their support, with special mentions to Savannah, Yasmin, Katya, Lucy, Sarah, Joseph and my agency/publisher twin, Aisha. This whole publishing thing is far less scary when you go through it with friends.
To my Flower Huns (what a useless WhatsApp group name, and now it’s in a published book so we can’t ever get rid of it) thank you for being my friends for more than a decade and for understanding when I disappear into my writer’s hole. Thanks to Elspeth, Lucy and Alice for being early readers.
To Peter and Gaye, thank you for your unwavering support; for reading the earliest version of this book and for letting me live somewhere so nice while I write the next one. And to Katie for championing this book from the start and for giving me the first spark of Pip.
To my big sister, Amy, thanks for letting me sneak into your room to watch Lost when I was too young – my love of mysteries has grown from there. To my little sister, Olivia, thank you for reading every single thing I’ve ever written, from that red notebook of scribbled stories to Elizabeth Crowe, you were my very first reader and I’m so grateful. To Danielle and George – oh hey look, you’ve made it into the acknowledgements just for being cute. You better not read this book until you are an appropriate age.
To Mum and Dad, thank you for giving me a childhood filled with stories, for raising me alongside books and films and games. I wouldn’t be here without all those years of Tomb Raider and Harry Potter . But thank you mostly for always saying I could when others said I couldn’t. We did it.
And to Ben. You are my constant through every tear, tantrum, failure, worry and victory. Without you, I couldn’t have done it at all.
Finally, thank you for picking up this book and reading to the end. You’ll never know how much it means.