Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

      Copyright © Kathleen Tessaro 2003

      Lines from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, taken from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T.S. Eliot, reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

      Extracts from Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, published by Frederick Muller, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

      Kathleen Tessaro asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      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 ebook 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 ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007151424

       Ebook Edition © JUNE 2009 ISBN: 9780007330768 Version: 2016–12–12

      I’d like to thank my dear friends Maria and Gavin for their inspiration and encouragement, all the girls at the Tuesday Night Wimpole Street Writers Workshop for teaching me how it’s done, Jonny Geller, Lynne Drew, and the entire team at HarperCollins, William Morrow and Curtis Brown for their support and vision. I’d also like to thank the London office of Wellington Management and Stephen McDermott in particular, who saved my manuscript from the ether more than once.