The Bone Thief (52 page)

There are so many other friends in the academic world who have put up with me and my ramblings over the years: Helen Gittos; Sarah Semple; Sam Turner; Kate Giles; Farah Mendelsohn; David Petts; Jane Stockdale; Alice Jorgensen; Emilia Jamroziak;
Lesley
Abrams; Hannah Collingridge; Heather Cushing; Simon Trafford; Katherine Lewis; Joanna Huntington; Claire Woozley; Anna Selvey; Felicity Clark; Noel James; Howard Williams; Sybille Zipperer; John Blair; Alex Sanmark; Dawn Hadley; Chris and Alison Daniell – it’s been a great journey in your company and I hope you’re not too disconcerted to find yourself cited in this context. (Anne Brundle, you are sorely missed.)

Harry Bingham and Sophia Bartleet of The Writers’ Workshop were the source of tremendous encouragement in the early stages. I also have to thank the staff at Julia’s Café in Stromness, Orkney, for letting me colonise a corner to write in even at their busiest times. Other friends without whom I would never have got this far are Lucy Blackburn, Susie Holden, Jessica Haydon, Janni Howker, and in particular Sophie Holroyd (thanks, Soph, for badgering me to write fiction).

I can’t really credit my sisters or my cousins with support for this project as they had very little idea what I was up to until the last minute – but thank you anyway, Wendy Lord, Katie Thompson, Clive, Rebecca, and Alexandra Lacey, for so much, in so many ways, and over the last twelve years in particular. (And never, never forgetting Quentin.)

Laura Longrigg, my agent at MBA, has been amazing; and I am also blessed in my editor at Ebury, Gillian Green. My husband Ben has been the greatest help imaginable, particularly in keeping our daughter Stella off my keyboard. My debt to my late parents, Sheila and Miles Thompson, is beyond all calculation. But the deepest thanks must go to my aunt and my mother-in-law, who read early drafts with great patience and astute comments, and to them
The Bone Thief
is dedicated.

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Published in the UK in 2012 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company

Copyright © 2012 Victoria Whitworth

V.M. Whitworth has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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ISBN (Hardback) 9780091947217
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