When You Are Mine(119)

I wish to thank Nick Lucas for his advice and expertise on police matters. Any procedural mistakes in this text are mine and made wilfully because sometimes exact protocols slow down the story. That’s one great advantage of writing fiction – I get to make stuff up.

I am indebted, as always, to my wonderful agents Mark Lucas, Richard Pine, Nicki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough, and to my editors Lucy Malagoni, Rebecca Saunders and Colin Harrison. Working in the background are wonderful publishing teams at Little, Brown Book Group UK, Hachette Australia, and Scribner in the US, as well as my many foreign publishers far and wide, most notably Goldmann in Germany.

This was not an easy took to write – my wife Vivien can attest to that. And she will doubtless claim credit for never wavering in her belief that I could make it work. She was right, of course. When will I ever learn? I love her to bits, along with my three beautiful and talented children, Alex, Charlotte and Bella, who are my greatest creations.