For answering what were a lot of stupid questions about police, genealogical and genetic genealogical procedure, my humble thanks go to Neville Blackwood, Nick Barratt, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and Jim Wilson. Donald R. Snow at the Hyde Park Family History Centre helped point me in the right direction in finding some information about early records of the LDS. Carole Reeves did likewise when it came to trying to find out more about the treatments and conditions in mental hospitals of the 1940s and 1950s. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

For reading and editing the manuscript in its early stages -- and much, much more besides -- I would like to thank my agent, Araminta Whitley, and Lucy Cowie.

Thereafter, Stefanie Bierwerth, Daniela Rapp and Shan Morley Jones all made sure the finished entity was as good as it could possibly be. Thanks to you all.

The candle on the ledge guttered as it neared its end, shadows dancing on the wall. Beside her Sarah sensed the rhythmic rise and fall of her sisters' chests. Henrietta's and Emma's ability to fall asleep as soon as their heads lay on the pillow infuriated her, while she tossed and turned seeking sleep that took an age to arrive.

Not tonight, though. She lay rigid, pinned down beneath layers of blankets, not wanting to move and so drown out the muffled voices from the adjoining room.

Her future, her whole life was being discussed in there.

She could hear her mother, softly pleading, occasionally sobbing.

Her father's sonorous voice in response, calm and unyielding.

"I do not mean to disobey you,' she heard her mother say. 'But he is in his sixty-seventh year. Does that not seem wrong to you?'

The low rumble of his words was more difficult to decipher.

Sarah eased herself from under the weight of her covers and crept silently to the door, the breath from her nostrils frosting in the crisp night air. She shuddered. The September night was clear and cold but the undergarments beneath her nightclothes warded off the worst of the chill. She eased the door open and slipped into the dark hall.