The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

Acknowledgements

This was my ‘lockdown novel’. All annually published writers will have one of these in their list now. I started writing it in February 2020. I then got side-tracked by other things (signing six and a half thousand tip-in pages for the US being one of them!) and put it to one side for a while. By the time I came back to it, lockdown had started, I’d had COVID-19 and my children were at home all day. I typically write my books either at my kitchen table or in a coffee shop. Suddenly coffee shops were shut and my kitchen table was covered in my elder daughter’s college work. The kitchen itself was used by my family as some kind of informal staff room, a place to hang out and take a breather from work and learning. Complex meals were prepared and cooked here at all hours of the day. People seemed to be milling about constantly and there were no coffee shops to escape to and for eight long weeks I mooched about disconsolately saying that I COULD NOT WRITE. Not only were there people all over my work space but my book was set in 2019 and I couldn’t get my head around the concept of writing about a world before COVID-19, a world of naïve people going to pubs, sending their kids to school and hugging each other. I spoke to my editor at intervals over this period and each time she would say, ‘Are you writing?’ and each time I would explain that no, I wasn’t, I couldn’t, it was impossible, of course not. The first few times she was understanding, sympathetic. The fifth time she said, ‘You know you really do have to write this book, don’t you?’

So thank you, Selina, for breaking me out of my paralysis, and forcing me into problem-solving mode. This book was written in a rented writing space across the road from my house. My lockdown office. My godsend. Thank you so much, Lockdown Office, and thank you to Victoria and Rebecca at Swiss Quarters who made me feel so welcome during my time renting the unit.

On a professional level, 2020 was an exceptional year for me. I hit the number one spot in both the New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller lists, I sold over half a million copies of The Family Upstairs in the UK and over a million copies of Then She Was Gone in the US. Whilst hunkered down in my tiny, shrunken lockdown world, it was joyful to think of so many new readers coming to my books, exploring my backlist, finding an escape from the scariness of the real world. So thank you to everyone who bought one of my books last year and welcome to all my new readers who have come back for more. I am so grateful to you all.

Thank you to booksellers across the globe who somehow found ways to keep selling books to people who wanted to read them; Jiffy bags must have experienced a sales boom over the past year! And thank you to librarians who also found ingenious ways to keep their lending programmes going. Booksellers and librarians also kept up incredibly fast-moving and well-organised programmes of events for writers and readers during COVID-19 restrictions, so thank you to everyone who hosted me last year, from the comfort of my bedroom

Thank you to amazing Jonny Geller, my agent at amazing Curtis Brown in the UK, and amazing Deborah Schneider my agent at amazing Gelfman Schneider in the US. You have both been magnificent in maintaining incredibly high standards of service during such a challenging year.

Thank you to all my publishers, all over the world, with especial thanks to Selina Walker and Najma Finlay and everyone at Cornerstone in the UK and to Lindsay Sagnette and Ariele Fredman and everyone at Atria in the US.

Thank you to my spectacular writer pals who have kept me sane on various social media platforms this year: Jenny Colgan, Maddy Wickham, Jojo Moyes, Amanda Jennings, Tammy Cohen, Serena Mackesy, Chris Manby, Tamsin Grey, Adele Parks and a ton more.

And lastly, thank you to my family for being, on the whole, pretty decent company in a year when being decent company was about the most important thing to be.

Here’s to the end of a weird footnote in history and to normal business soon being resumed. Bring on the coffee shops!