So do we wait for the call? Barbara asked herself. Do we set out to find her? Do we simply pray? Do we convince ourselves with any amount of lies that no harm is meant and no harm will be done because this is, after all, a mother who loves her child and who knows above all that Hadiyyah belongs with her father, because he’s given up everything to stand at her side and has, as a result, absolutely nothing without her?
God, how she wanted Lynley to be there. He would know what to do. He would know what to say. He would listen to the entire anguished tale and he would have the right words of hope to give to Azhar, the words she herself couldn’t muster because she hadn’t the skill. She hadn’t the heart. But still she had to do something, say something, find something, because if she didn’t, what sort of friend was she to a man in agony? And if she couldn’t find the words or develop a plan, was she in truth a friend at all?
It was nearly ten o’clock when Barbara finally went to her bungalow’s small bathroom. Lynley had not yet rung her back, but she knew he would. He would not fail her because DI Lynley did not fail people. That was not who he was. So he would ring as soon as he was able, and Barbara believed this— she clung to this— because she had to believe something and there was nothing else left to believe and she certainly didn’t believe in herself.
In the bathroom she turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat. She was shivering, not from the cold, for the electric fire had finally warmed the bungalow, but rather from something else far more insidious and more deeply felt than frigid temperature against one’s skin. She looked at herself in the mirror as the steam began to seep from the shower. She studied the person she had become at the behest of others. She thought of the steps that had to be taken to find Hadiyyah and to return the little girl to her father. The steps were many, but Barbara knew the first one.
She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, a nice sharp pair that sheared easily through the bones of chickens although she’d never used them for that or, as it happened, for anything else. But they were perfect for the need she had now.
She returned to the bathroom, where she shed her clothes.
She adjusted the temperature of the water.
She stepped into the shower.
There, she began to hack off her hair.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As an American writing a series set in the UK, I am continually in the debt of people in England who willingly help me in the early stages of my research. For this novel, I’m extremely grateful to the staff and owners of Gilpin Lodge in Cumbria who provided me a lovely safe haven from which to launch my exploration into the countryside that became the backdrop for this novel. The Queen’s Guide to the Sands— Cedric Robinson— was a generous and invaluable source of information on Morecambe Bay, having spent all of his life living on the bay and most of his life guiding people across its perilous expanse at low tide. Mr. Robinson’s wife Olive graciously welcomed me into their eight-hundred-year-old cottage and allowed me to pick her brains as well as those of her husband during my time in Cumbria. The ever resourceful Swati Gamble of Hodder and Stoughton once again proved that, armed with the Internet and a telephone, nothing is impossible for her.
In the United States, Bill Solberg and Stan Harris helped me in matters pertaining to lakeside life, and a chance encounter with Joanne Herman in the San Francisco greenroom of a Sunday morning talk show put me in possession of her book Transgender Explained for Those Who Are Not. Caroline Cossey’s book My Story elucidated better than anything the pain and confusion of gender dysphoria and the prejudice one faces having made the decision to do something about it.
I’m grateful for the support of my husband, Thomas McCabe, for the always cheerful presence of my personal assistant Charlene Coe, and for the readings of early drafts of this novel done by my longtime cold reader Susan Berner and by Debbie Cavanaugh. My professional life is made smoother through the efforts of my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, as well as my British publishing team of Sue Fletcher, Martin Nield, and Karen Geary at Hodder and Stoughton. With this novel, I join a new American publishing team at Dutton, and I’m grateful for the confidence in my work expressed by my editor and publisher Brian Tart.
Finally, to my readers who are interested in Cumbria and its crowning jewel— the Lake District— all of the places in this novel are real, as is the case in all my books. I have merely picked them up and moved them when necessary. Ireleth Hall stands in for Levens Hall, the home of Hal and Susan Bagot; the Faircloughs’ boathouse can actually be found in Fell Foot Park; Arnside House stands in for Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts beauty on the shore of Lake Windermere; Bryan Beck farm grew from an Elizabethan manor house called Townend; and Bassenthwaite village became Bryanbarrow village, complete with ducks. Playing God with locations such as these is part of the pleasure of writing fiction.
Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island, Washington