Кара Хантер: No Way Out

When I take her in my arms, touching her is electricity. Two months' absence `“ and now her smell, her hair, her body `“ known and not known. Intimate and gloriously strange. She's the one, in the end, who pulls back. Takes my face in her hands, traces the tear on my cheek with her finger.

`You really thought I wasn't coming back?'

`I knew how much it meant to you. I knew how unhappy you were.'

She smiles again. `Not any more.'

I stare at her a moment then reach forward for the bottle. `We should celebrate. It's a Meursault.'

Her favourite. Her absolute favourite.

She shakes her head. `No, thank you. Not for me.'

`OK, it's a bit early but it's the same one we had at the Boathouse last summer. The one you went mad about. Took me bloody ages to find it.'

She smiles. `It looks wonderful and I wish I could, but I can't.' Her smile widens. `I really can't. I did tell you, didn't I, that I wanted to be sure. And now I am.'

And now she's staring at my dazzled and incredulous face and nodding and my eyes are full of tears and I'm laughing and she's taking me in her arms and holding out a photo and my heart is in freefall as I look, for the first time, at the blizzard of grey and white dots and realize what it means. What all of it means `“ the weeks of pain and waiting and doubt.

A child.

Our child.

`I still can't believe you didn't guess,' she whispers, her eyes sparkling. `Call yourself a detective`¦'

The first people I would like to thank are my readers. It's been an amazing year `“ only a year! `“ and I want to thank everyone who has bought, borrowed, read, reviewed and recommended the two Adam Fawley books that have gone before this one.

Thanks are due again to my outstanding `pro team': Detective Inspector Andy Thompson for his help with police procedures; Joey Giddings for expert advice on forensics; Ann Robinson for her help with the medical side; my good friend Philip Mann for his knowledge of all things nautical; Nicholas Syfret QC for the legal aspects; and Jeremy Dalton for ensuring I didn't make a fool of myself when it came to online gaming. I'd also particularly like to thank Graham Turner and Steve Johns of Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service for their absolutely invaluable help and advice `“ I couldn't have done it without them. As before, I have exercised a degree of artistic licence in some areas, as all writers do, but any errors are solely down to me.

Thank you also to my agent Anna Power, who continues to amaze me, and the whole wonderful team at Penguin `“ my editor Katy Loftus, my superb PR Jane Gentle, Rose Poole for such great work on the campaigns, the whole team at DeadGood for their fabulous support, and James Keyte, who brought the previous two books to life on audio and will I hope be working on this one. Thank you also to my excellent copy-editor Karen Whitlock, and a special mention to Emma Brown and the Penguin production team: every book has introduced a new design challenge (the fire report this time) and as always they have risen to it beautifully.

As with Close to Home and In The Dark , I have had wonderful support from my team of `first readers': my husband, Simon (who also drafted the infamous Esmond will), and my dear friends Stephen, Sarah, Peter, Elizabeth and Andy.

A few final words on the book itself. As before, while there are some real Oxford places and roads in the novel, others are my own invention. There is, for example, no `Southey Road' or `Bishop Christopher's'. The news items are also entirely fictional; none of the people represented is based on a real person and any similarity between online usernames in the book and those of real people is entirely coincidental.

The BBC radio podcast I refer to is a fine and moving piece of broadcasting by Jon Manel, which you can still listen to by searching for The Adoption on the BBC iPlayer.