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For Dot with love and gratitude
‘You want to know how it’s done? I can’t tell you that. Shh, or you’ll spoil the magic.’
Freddie Puck: The Art of Illusion
Table of Contents
Prologue
1982: Tatiana
Halloween
Part One: There May I Marry Thee
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
1983: Tatiana
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
1986: Tatiana
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
1988: Tatiana
Part Two: Ill Met by Moonlight
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
1992: Bron
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
1995: Bron
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
1998: Bron
Part Three: The Course of True Love
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
2002: Tatiana
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
2007: Tatiana
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
2012: Tatiana
Part Four: And All is Mended
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Now: Bron
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Now: Bron
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Now: Bron and Tatiana
Epilogue: Three years later
Acknowledgements
Afterword
‘Thou speakest aright:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II, Scene 1
‘“Lord what fools these mortals be …” You could say that’s my mantra. It’s easy to hypnotise the gullible, but I’ve managed to hypnotise sceptics too. I like to think Shakespeare knew a thing or two about hypnotism.’
Freddie Puck interviewed in The Sun, June 1982
‘You’re late,’ Freddie Puck was standing languidly by the stage door, as Tatiana came flying down the street straight from dinner with her agent, Susan Peasebottom, where she’d both eaten and drunk more then she should have. He was smoking a cigarette, and as usual, looked calm and in control. She hated the way he always did that; she always felt ill at ease around Freddie, as if he knew a secret about her that she did not. But then that was part of what he did, play mind games on people to screw them up.
‘You’re lucky I’m here at all,’ she muttered. After the offer Susan had put to her this evening,
