The Other Woman’s House (54 page)

Thank you to Liz and Andrew Travis for donating their business to the good cause of fiction, to Beth Hocking for passing on a useful contact, and to Guy Martland for supplying the necessary gruesome facts about malodorous bodies and mummification. Thank you to Anne Grey for teaching me everything I know about homeopathy, to Lewis Jones for referring to someone as ‘Gummy' in my presence, to Heidi Westman for mentioning a minor incident involving a SatNav that, as far as I know, was never satisfactorily resolved and therefore remains rather suspicious (though far be it from me to cast aspersions…) Thank you to Mark Worden for the Pink Floyd book, to Paul Bridges for the surname anthology (which immediately fell open at the name ‘Gilpatrick'), to Tom Palmer, James Nash and Rachel Connor for editorial advice in the early stages, and to Stuart Kelly, who introduced me to the concept of the mobilising grievance – mine is that I didn't think of it myself.

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.