Thank you to Fiona Sampson, author of the brilliant poem ‘Anchorage’ – which is reprinted in the novel and from which the novel’s title is a quote – and to Carcanet Press for allowing me to use the poem. Thanks also to The Estate of Hilaire Belloc and PFD for allowing me to use ‘The Microbe’ in this book.
Thank you to Val McDermid, who invented Reverse L’Oréal Syndrome.
Massive thanks to my inspirational agent Peter Straus, to the wonderful Jenny Hewson, and to my superb publishers Hodder & Stoughton, especially Carolyn Mays, Karen Geary and Francesca Best.
I wouldn’t have been able to write this novel if I hadn’t read three books: Unexpected Death in Childhood edited by Peter Sidebotham and Peter Fleming, Cherished by Angela Cannings and Megan Lloyd Davies, and Stolen Innocence: the Sally Clark Story by John Batt. The experiences of women such as Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel were part of the inspiration for A Room Swept White, though none of the characters or cases in my novel are based on real people or cases.
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