Prologue   2018 APRIL 12   She sent me a Friend request. Usually I get stupidly excited by one of those—someone out there wants to get in touch. At my age, anything unexpected that doesn’t involve disease or death is a relief. So unless it’s from some random weird person, a Friend request is a plus. But when I saw her name I winced. Why had she contacted me after all this time? Almost fifty years had passed since I last saw her. I know that school ties, especially at a boarding school, are strong ones. We spent four years together in classrooms, on sports fields, in dormitories. Four years seeing each other every day and every night. Four teenage years cooped up like chickens in a pen. We all got to know each other much too well. Yet our class has been a ghost class: it’s been as if we never existed. Not for us the “are you married/do you have children/what job do you have/you’re looking great” staples of school reunion banter. The Stonybridge School for Girls graduating class of 1970 never had a class reunion. We effectively disappeared ourselves. We all wanted to forget. So why look…

Like the main character in Safe House, I moved to Cornwall on the south-western coast of England recently. Only I wasn’t running away from my past, or starting over again with a new identity. And, as far as I know, no-one is after me to make me pay for past misdemeanours! I’ve always been devoted to Cornwall, having been on holidays here when I was a child to quaintly named villages such as Mousehole, and explored the ruins of Tintagel Castle imagining myself an Arthurian Knight. One of my all-time favourite books is based here too–Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The new adaptation is soon to be released by Netflix and I wonder whether people’s interest in books based here will increase. I hope more people will fall in love with Cornwall, just as I have. If you’ve got a hankering to read more Cornish novels after Rebecca and SAFE HOUSE, here are five of the best. 1-Jumping straight in with the best non-fiction book I’ve ever read. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. Raynor and her terminally ill husband walked the entire South West coastal path after losing their home and being left almost penniless. Not just Cornwall but…