A MILLION ANGELS (16 page)

Thank you, Daniel – my wonderful IT support man, personal chef, foot masseur, hottie-maker, lover, husband and friend for your presence, your humour, your patience and your love. I love you so much.

Thank you to my parents-in-law, Len and Georgie Maryon, for sharing your childhood memories of war. And thank you so much for everything else you've shared with me and for being such amazing grandparents to Jane and Tim.

Thank you, my beautiful Jane, for styling Jemima! For reading and feed-backing and being my text advisor
and for bringing so much love and so many angels to my life.

Thank you, my beautiful boys, Tim, Sam, Joe and Ben, for all your love and gorgeousness and support.

Thank you, Tim and Susie, for all the love and memories we share. To Paul for this wonderful thing we still have. To Dawne, for our true and wonderful friendship.

Thank you, Roseanna, for being such a patient and honest reader – telling me that something needed to happen was very helpful. Without that, this would have been a very boring book!

Thank you a trillion times, my lovely Agent, Eve, for your constant support and love. Thank you a trillion times, my lovely Editor, Rachel, for your commitment to getting it right, your gift for knowing what works, for your faith in me and your love.

Thank you, wonderful Rose, for managing all the millions of details and for your constant commitment, care and love.

Thank you, Michelle Brackenborough, for such a gorgeous cover design, I love it so much! Thank you everyone else from HarperCollins, for all your hard work and enthusiasm.

Thank you to the real Mr Derek Bech and his sisters Barbara and Sonia, for agreeing to have your real life experience of the SS
City of Benares
disaster woven into my story. It felt so important to honour this piece of history with the truth.

Thank you, Major Philip Nathan and Nikki, Isabelle and Oliver for the guided tour of Army life. I hope I got it right! And thank you, David, Rachel, Lauren and Aimee Somerville for doing the same. Thank you, Captain Oliver Stuart, for helping me answer difficult questions with care. Thank you, Lucy, for telling me all about e-blueys and telling me the kinds of things you write to your dad about when he's away.

Thank you, Steve Humphries, from Testimony Films, for putting me in touch with Derek and for sending me your film and the book,
The Children of the Doomed Voyage
. They were both so helpful.

Thank you, my lovely niece, Nurse Zoe, for helping me get the coma and stroke info right.

And thank you to all the people who I'll probably never get to meet – those who plant and cut the sustainable forests, make the paper, print the pages, wrap and pack and drive and stack and sell my books – without
all of you
A Million Angels
would be left drifting in my imagination instead of being read by the world.

Thank you, Adam, for gently guiding me home to me.

I send a million angels to you all. xxx

Kate Maryon is now officially addicted to writing!

She still walks her dog, spends as much time as she can with her children, husband and friends, works as a homeopath, runs detox retreats and does all the daily doings of a day. But there's always the possibility of a story running through her mind, the shadow of a character forming in her heart and her fingers are always itching to get back to her laptop to tippy tap away.

Kate still loves chocolate, films, eating out, reading, writing and lying on sunny beaches and she still dislikes peppermint and honey.

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First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children's Books
2011
HarperCollins
Children's Books
is a division of HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd,
77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

The HarperCollins
Children's Books
website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk

A MILLION ANGELS
. Text copyright © Kate Maryon 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-743589-0

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