Author's Notes: Spoilers below. Don't read unless you've finished the story.

Firstly, I want to emphasise that Sean invented the connection between SIDS and vaginal sex in the late stages of pregnancy, purely in order to get his wicked way with Paul. To the best of current knowledge, there is no connection between the two, but if you are in any doubt, consult a doctor, rather than the pages of a fictional story.

You may find it all pretty boring anyway, so feel free to skip, and please add your comments to Chapter 6, rather than to these notes (unless they are comments about the notes!).

I wanted to document a little about the derivation of the plot elements, since looking back afterwards on completion of most of my stories, it usually seems much of a blur. In this case, the basic story had been in embryo form for about three years but had several times been put aside. If you think the plot is complicated now, you should have seen it six months ago!

The base storyline started off much as you read it now. After seeing what Big Busts products were capable of, Marianne (although that wasn't then her name) wanted to spring her brother from jail, and realising they would be unlikely to escape the area, gave him an unlikely disguise as a pregnant woman. Marianne wanted a pregnant partner with whom Sean could hide. She felt sure the police would want to interview her after Sean's escape, so that ruled her out, and she didn't want to involve a really pregnant woman. Not only might she detect Sean was false, but the potential shock of discovery could harm the mother or baby. Hence Paul's involvement in the scheme. Fine so far.

The real complication in my initial plot was that Paul and Marianne swapped places, so they became Mrs & Mr Johnson. After leaving Paul and Sharon, Marianne then swapped back to being female. The complications of a female pretending to be a male, talking with (and chatting up) two pregnant females who were really males, one of whom knew about the other, whilst the other did not, was just unworkable, and the draft kept being thrown aside. Keeping Marianne consistently female by turning her into a 'sister' really made it much simpler to keep the plot going. Even so, it was difficult creating the consistency in the lies told by Marianne and Paul.

There was always going to be a person travelling in Marianne's car to Bath who had assisted in the jailbreak, but it was planned that gay fashion designer Wayne Williams was to have no other part in the proceedings. If you think Paul was surprised to learn that Wayne was a child pornographer, imagine how surprised I felt, as I was writing the final scene on the train, to realise that Wayne would provide the perfect vehicle for Sean's criminality.

The car accident which trapped all those involved in the Seacombe area was an essential part of the initial story. However, it was only in writing the final chapter that Marianne became the cause of it! The wonders of creative writing - and the reason why I would never want to publish unfinished work - meant that it was simple to go back and embroider a few necessary elements into the story, to create something that now appears to be integral to the story.

Finally, I too was surprised to learn that Marianne was pregnant. Certainly from my perspective, it was an unplanned pregnancy! But to me, one of the joys of writing is when you find the characters you have created take off and start doing spontaneous and unexpected things.

With any mystery, there's always a difficulty in deciding just how many clues to give to the reader so that they feel they could have worked out the solution, even though they were not able to. Those who have read a few of my stories will know there's often an unexpected twist at the end, so I guess I tend to make them more complicated than I might otherwise do. Thank heavens I did, as I was unprepared for the combined brain power of all those who commented: Could it be this? Sharon appears suspicious; Is she really a he? What about this? Or that? In the end, I think the complexity of the plot stood up reasonably well against the onslaught, but many of you were far too close for comfort and I was on tenterhooks the whole time.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Love

Charlotte