Dear Andrew,
I think it’s time we …
She paused, still not sure how to put it, and stared unseeingly at the tall oak bookshelves opposite her desk. They held all the legal texts that had formed and buttressed her life for the past thirty-six years. After a moment she started to write again, but the ink had dried. Shaking the pen this time, she dropped a huge blot on the paper. When she’d screwed it into a ball and flung it into the wastepaper basket, she tried once more.
My dear Andrew …
Bello
hidden talent rediscovered
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Copyright
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2007
This edition published 2016 by Bello
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 2007
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author of this work has been asserted by her in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Author’s Note
I finished writing this novel in May 2005, that is about two months before the appalling events of 7/7. When I heard the news my first instinct was to cut the scene on pages 92-96 out of respect for the victims of the atrocity. Then I came to believe that if writers start to censor themselves because of terrorists’ actions we will be making a kind of surrender. And that cannot happen. So, with the deepest sympathy for everyone who suffered then, and admiration for the emergency services and all the people involved in the clear-up, I have left the scene as I wrote it.
One other scene that I might have altered in reflection of real life is that on page 308, when the judge is summing up the cut-throat rules. As any lawyer will know, they have been changed.
A Greater Evil Page 32