The It Girl(135)
She clicks to select all 2,758. Then she moves over and presses the delete button.
This action will affect all 2,758 messages in Requests, her computer prompts. Are you sure that you want to continue?
She clicks okay.
The page hangs for a moment, as if giving her the chance to change her mind… and then the screen goes blank. There are no messages with this label it says.
Her email pings again, and she glances at it. It’s from a reporter she doesn’t know, someone called Paul Dylon. The subject line is Urgent request for comment re quashing of Neville conviction, for 6 o’clock news.
Hannah presses delete and watches as the message swirls away into the ether. She closes down her laptop, stands, and stretches long and hard, feeling the baby inside her shift luxuriantly, as if reveling in the extra space. The bones in her hips and spine click, and she releases a long breath.
Then she walks over to the cupboard in the corner of the living room, the one where they keep the screwdrivers and the Allen keys and the spare fuses. She pulls out the toolbox and takes it across to the window, clearing a wide space on the rug.
It’s time. She has a crib to build.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Beginning any novel is daunting (have I forgotten how to do it, will the plot come good), but writing about Oxford is a particular kind of challenge—it’s been novelized so frequently and so well that it feels slightly hubristic to add to the pile of books about the college experience. It’s particularly daunting when, like me, you didn’t actually go to Oxford yourself, so huge thanks therefore to the friends who helped with my questions and queries about the minutiae of college life, entrance exams, and what exactly I could get away with in the name of artistic license—in particular Kate Bell and Chris Moore, Rosie Wellesley, Joe Moshenska, and Beth and Amanda Jennings. Thanks also to Fiona Nixon who answered my questions about studying medicine. Needless to say any stretches of the imagination are mine, as are any flat-out mistakes—and it probably doesn’t need saying, but Pelham College is an entirely fictional entity, and its pastoral failings certainly aren’t based on any real Oxford colleges.
Thank you to Sam Gordon for his advice on elimination DNA and crime scene processes, to AA Dhand for his pharmaceutical knowledge, and to Colin Scott for invaluable help with aspects of the court case (as well as countless other things).
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.