Lasting Damage

by Sophie Hannah

  Thanks to Dan for the Christmas tree stain (ahem) and the unconventional house name ideas. Thank you to Phoebe and Guy for the lovely cards and presents when I finished the book, and for their crucial insights regarding Ben 10 aliens.

  Major thank-yous to John Jepps and Peter Bean, for all the usual reasons, and this time for an extra reason too, which will only make itself apparent if they read the book.

  Thanks to Geoff Jones, and to the mysterious (and, I have no doubt, non-fictional) ‘Mr Pixley’, who kept offering just a bit more money than I did. Hmm . . . Thank you to the Jill Sturdy Centre for giving rise to an intriguing plot possibility.

  I can only imagine how sick of me the estate agents of Cambridge are. They might be pleased to know that I found the right house in the end, or they might simply shudder and growl at the thought of me. Whichever is the case, thank you anyway to Nick Redmayne, Chris Arnold, Oliver Hughes, George Moore, Stewart Chipchase, James Barnett, Richard Freshwater, Robert Couch, Michael Higginson, Zoe and Belinda from Carter Jonas and the rest. I promise I won’t move again soon.

  Thank you to my virtual spiritual home, the Rightmove website (on which I can safely say there are no images of dead bodies, having examined every single house and each floorplan in great detail). I’m not an addict; I could stop anytime I wanted to. And besides, it’s not bad for you if you do it in moderation, and I’m down to an hour a day. Thank you to both Trinity College and Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge – my non-virtual spiritual homes.

  Thank you to Will Peterson for being amazing and lovely, to Morgan White for the bench plaque witticism, to Jenny and Ben Almeida for the new married surname idea.

  Finally, I would like to thank Alexis Washam, Carolyn Mays, Francesca Best and Jason Bartholomew for rallying round during the fraught (nay nightmarish) Chapter 27 emergency. Without your help, Chapter 27 would never have pulled through.

  The poem ‘When First My Way to Fair I Took’ is by A E Housman.

  About the Author

  As well as writing psychological thrillers, Sophie Hannah is a bestselling poet and an award-winning short story writer. Her fifth collection of poetry, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 TS Eliot Award. She won first prize in the Daphne du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her psychological suspense story The Octopus Nest. Her psychological thrillers Little Face and Hurting Distance were long-listed for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and The Other Half Lives was shortlisted for the Independent Booksellers’ Book of the Year Award. Sophie lives with her husband and children in Cambridge, where she is a Fellow Commoner at Lucy Cavendish College.

  More information about Sophie can be found at www.sophiehannah.com