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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
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Text copyright © Jenny Valentine 2015
Jenny Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007512362
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008126230
Version: 2015-06-23
For my Dad.
Contents
At my father’s funeral, after everything, I lit a great big fire in his honour, built from stacked apple crates and broken furniture and pieces of a fallen-down tree. It towered over the scrubby piece of land I call the bonfire garden, and blazed, too far gone to fight, against the fading afternoon. On the lawn below me, my family gulped for air like landed fish. They clawed at their own faces like Edvard Munch’s Screamers, like meth-heads. His mourners poured from the house, designer-clad and howling, lit up like spectres by the flames.
My
