ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have made it without the combined efforts of Jack Butler, Emily Ruston, Jane Snelgrove and all at Thomas & Mercer. Thank you for your patience and understanding. As always, thanks to the mighty Catherine Cho for championing me. I’m glad to have you in my corner.
Being a single parent is hard. You need good people around you who can lend a hand when you’re struggling. So my deep and sincere thanks to Andy and Clair for being so HELPFUL and letting me and my girl crash at theirs more times than I can count. Thank you to all my friends for their support, especially Alex, Amy B, Amy M, Lisa and Tina – you are my rocks in fast-moving water.
Anne Booty, you delight, you utter delight. I love you loads, thank you for all your support.
To my mum for everything: thank you. For my sisters Simone and Johanna, for my big bro Dominic and for my dad Berwyn, all my love.
I want to mention Hannah Williams, Tracy Meade, Damilola Taylor, Hannah Deterville, Joy Morgan, Patrick Warren and David Spencer, and all the other children who were overlooked and underreported. I wish we could have done better for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2019 A. Murrell
Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s Cujo and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.
She began writing short stories as a teenager and dropped out of a fashion journalism course at university when she realised it wasn’t anywhere near as fun as making stuff up. After spells living in London and Brighton, Daisy had her short story ‘The Black Prince’ published in One Eye Grey magazine. Another short story, ‘The Brook Witch’, was performed on stage at the Small Story Cabaret in Lewes in 2016. She has also written articles about mental health online. In 2015, The Silence won a bursary with The Literary Consultancy, and later that year Daisy also won the CHINDI Authors Competition with her short story ‘Worm Food’. Her second novel was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Award.
Daisy currently works in the library at the University of Sussex, where she shelves books and listens to podcasts on true crime and folklore. She lives in Lewes with a one-eyed Siamese cat and a nine-year-old daughter who occasionally needs reminding that ghosts and monsters aren’t real.
Sometimes she almost believes it herself.
