We stand there grinning at each other for a moment, before I surge forward, leaning up to kiss her. Just quickly, but oh my God, and when I step back, Addison’s the one blushing, and all my nerves have disappeared.
She fiddles with her car keys and then says, “You know, since it’s probably gonna be a while before we get to do a date IRL,”—oh, Jesus, she actually said “IRL,” am I sure about this?—“I think we should probably do that again.”
Whether she’s the kind of person who says IRL or not—I absolutely, wholeheartedly, agree.
And I kiss her again.
acknowledgments
It’s probably pretty obvious what inspired a book about being suddenly stuck inside ‘on lockdown’ due to a very contagious disease, so we don’t need to talk about that too much here. But I will say that from March 2020, a couple of weeks before writing this book, I found myself on lockdown, on my own, in my little flat. Some of us, in a Shaun-of-the-Dead level of optimism, thought we’d give it a couple of weeks, bake some banana bread, and wait for it all to blow over.
Originally, this book— Lockdown on London Lane, as I titled it at first—was A Project. It was intended to keep me busy, give me focus for a few weeks when there seemed no end in sight for the lockdown. I decided to upload it on Wattpad to give me that sense of community I was missing, and because, well, maybe there were other people around who, like me, found the news too depressing to even con-template watching, and needed a light-hearted distraction that didn’t feel “doom and gloom.”
So I hope that’s what this is. A light-hearted distraction, from whatever might be going on.
There are a lot of people to thank for this book, so let’s get started.
First up, I need to thank my friends. Ellie, Hannah, and Emily (the very same Cactus Updates crew from the dedication) for the brilliant virtual get-togethers; Lauren and Jen, always there to lift me up; Katie and Amy both for always being there on the other side of Messenger, putting up with me when I was being a needy extrovert stuck by myself. Aimee, because even if we haven’t seen each other in months, you never fail to make me laugh. I feel like all my friends put up with a lot from me during lockdown, so thanks for always being there. I love you.
Massive thank-you to my family, as well. Mum and Dad; Gransha (my biggest fan, always); Auntie Sally and Uncle Jason. It was hard to be away from you guys for so long in the midst of all the madness, but the regular FaceTimes and virtual Happy Birthday singalongs every so often made that distance feel like nothing at all. And, of course, my brilliant sister, Katie, who deserves a special shoutout after having to live with me for almost an entire month before Christmas in our own sort of lockdown.
And then there are the people without whom this book would absolutely not have been possible. My wonderful agent, Clare, who is always championing me, along with the rest of the wonderful team at Darley Anderson. The entire team at Wattpad—specifically thanks to Caitlin, I-Yana, Deanna, and Paisley! —and the whole community on the Wattpad platform who kept me scrolling through comments for hours each week when I was uploading this in 2020. Bec and the team at Sphere, whose enthusiasm for this book was a much-needed boost in a really weird time!
This book is filled with a lot of characters, which feels apt given how many people go into helping create it behind the scenes. I hope you fall in love with the cast of this book as much as I did, and I hope you enjoy their adventures, whether you’re reading this while at home on the sofa or out in the world on an adventure of your own!
about the author
Beth Reekles is the author of The Kissing Booth series, which inspired the incredibly successful Netflix films. She first published The Kissing Booth on Wattpad in 2010, when she was just fifteen years old, and it accumulated almost twenty million reads before being published in 2012. Lockdown on London Lane is her tenth published book. Beth also runs a blog, where she talks about life as a twenty-something and offers writing advice. She’s a fan of movies, fan fiction, and musicals.