Guilty One

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to say a big thank you to my editor, Emma Beswetherick, for her creativity and support, and to all at Piatkus for their tireless enthusiasm.

Several people have given their time to help my research for this book, and this was crucial in helping to make the worlds the characters inhabit more believable. I would particularly like to thank Kate Barrie, Tony Beswetherick Iain Cockbain, Jason Cubbon, Elizabeth Gray, Jacinta Jones, Eileen Leyden, John Leyden, Sarah Long, Alastair & Juliette MacDonald, Sandra Morrison, Laura Stuart, Sarah Stuart and Scott. A. Ware for their various help on everything from the legal world to regional accents, music and locations. Very special thanks to Gerry Considine for allowing me insight into the work of a criminal solicitor, and to Liz and Alan Paterson for their advice on Social Work issues.

Writing involves spending a lot of time by yourself, but I doubt that this creative solitude would have been possible without my many friends, family and colleagues who all believed that someday this would happen even though I doubted it. I would particularly like thank: Paul Ballantyne, Russell Ballantyne, The Darroch Sisters: Mairi, Jane and Val, Marie Kobine, Helen Leyden, Allan MacLean, Julie Ramsay, Ian Thomson, Gordon Webb.

But it is readers who complete writers, and my greatest debt is to my own early readers, without whose positive criticism, I may never have written another word: Kent & Mary Ballantyne, Rita Balneaves, Mary Fitzgerald-Peltier, Mark Kobine, Phil Mason and Elizabeth McCrone. This book would not exist without you.

While researching the novel, I read As If, by Blake Morrison, and The Case of Mary Bell, by Gitta Sereny. I would like to thank both writers for their very different but equally insightful portraits of children on trial.

Last, but certainly not least, a great many thanks to my wonderful agent, Nicola Barr, for her astuteness, her faith and encouragement.