Wake (47 page)

No one had noticed the water-dimpled writing pad lying in the mauve haze of a smoke bush that grew by the spa's front steps. On the pad's exposed page were two lines, written in fading pencil.

But you wouldn't have shot him.

The Wake is here. Look at Sam.

Acknowledgements

A heartfelt thanks to all those who read and commented on this novel as it grew and mutated: Natasha Fairweather, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Ellen Kushner, Jonathan King and David Larsen.

Thanks also to Ursula Poole for kakapo insights, and to Tracey Sullivan of the Pharmacy Guild of New Zealand for advice on what might be in a small-town pharmacy.

Thank you to my mother, Heather Knox, whose motor neurone disease, with its enforced silence and isolation, and its long slide, motivated this novel, and whose valour and stoicism inspired it. And thank you to my sister Sara and my husband Fergus—You and You.