I blamed my son for the death of my daughter… When twenty-five-year-old Erin loses the man she loves, she flees London for Cornwall and takes a job at Hookes End, a huge house clinging precariously to the Cornish cliffs. The owner, frail reclusive novelist and butterfly enthusiast Maggie, has kept the curtains of her dusty house drawn for many years. But as she and Erin spend evenings together by the fireside, sharing stories of the past, Erin feels her shattered heart begin to heal. In return, Erin agrees to help Maggie find her long lost family before it is too late. Years ago, Maggie’s son Lucas ran away to the other side of the world after the death of her daughter ripped the family apart. Maggie is desperate to see Lucas again – there is something she needs him to know. Erin wants to help Maggie find peace so she vows to track down her lost son. But when at last she finds Lucas, in a far- away place of searing heat and pearly sands, it becomes clear that he is hiding something too. As Erin grows closer to Lucas and unravels the webs of deceit entangling mother and son, she learns about the terrible tragedy that changed their lives forever: the night when a little girl in a fairy nightdress went missing. But with Maggie’s time fast running out, is it too late for them to find the forgiveness they need to move on? A heart-wrenching page-turner about a family ripped apart by guilt and lies. Set against the storms of the Cornish coast and silvery tropical sands of a distant paradise, The Butterfly Garden is a story of love, loss and letting go. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Harriet Evans and Lucinda Riley will be gripped. What everyone’s saying about The Butterfly Garden : ‘ I loved this book from beginning to end… a wonderful sweeping story of grief, regrets and hidden secrets…will keep you hooked, with some very poignant and emotional parts that’ll have you reaching for the tissues. I loved it. A fabulous debut novel’ A Book ‘n Brew 2 Blog, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘An absolutely delightful novel…From Cornwall to Costa Rica, this book delights over and over… The Butterfly Garden has it all.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘A wonderful story which brought on an array of emotions ’ The Thoughts of a Bibliophile, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘ I was completely absorbed in The Butterfly Garden from beginning to end… I loved the way the book carefully unravelled the secrets at its centre… had me thinking about the story and the characters long after I had finished reading. Highly recommended ’ Beth Miller ‘ Moving and heartfelt… I really enjoyed it’ My Fiction Book Reviews, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘A delightful story’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Highly recommend this book and author. A wonderful read.’ Linda Strong Book Reviews ‘This is a beautiful story about family bonds set in the equally beautiful locations of Cornwall and Costa Rica’ Cayo Costa ‘Beautifully written’ Bashful Bookworm ‘ I was drawn in right from the start… I’ll definitely look out for more books from Sophie Anderson’ Goodreads reviewer ‘Really packs an emotional punch’ No Genre Left Behind
Release date:
June 21, 2021
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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I had my first appointment with Dr Sham today. He has asked me to start a diary. It feels strange; I haven’t written one since I was fourteen. I am not sure what he wants me to write: the fact that I didn’t leave the house today, didn’t even bother to get dressed? Or the fact that I had a bacon sandwich this morning for the first time in nineteen years? I had to do something radical, blow away the suffocating fog, but I just vomited violently, then sobbed on the bathroom floor. Or that I go to bed before Richard every night so that when he comes in, I can feign sleep and not have to touch the tortured soul he has become. Or that Lucas doesn’t eat meals with us any more, or that I am pretending not to notice him smoking weed in the garage. Or that sometimes when everyone else is out, I go into her bedroom and get into her bed, put her pillow over my head and breathe in her sweet, sweet smell. I breathe so hard that I feel giddy. Which is a relief from the wretched weight of despair.
Porthteal, 2017
‘Eyes Wanted’, the ad read in the village shop window, below it a phone number scrawled on a scrappy piece of paper. Erin was desperate. It had rained steadily for the three weeks since she’d been back and her spirit was already crumpling under the relentless scorn of her mum. And then she’d overheard Brenda calling her a homewrecker as she scanned Mrs Talbot’s groceries.
‘Her poor father must be so ashamed,’ she’d said. ‘And now she’s back without a penny to her name, living off his good nature. Such a kind man.’
So, Erin had called. Mrs Muir gave nothing away on the phone but summoned Erin to her house. ‘Past the lighthouse and down the first track after the stile,’ she said, but Erin knew. Everyone in Porthteal knew that house.
It was November, and the last remnants of a sunny autumn had been washed away into rivers of cold brown mud. The days were short and the fruit on the trees was rotten. The waves rolled in from beyond the fog and crashed over the sea wall with furious tenacity, filling the whole bay with a froth of white water. Icy shards of rain pricked Erin’s face as she turned down the track and saw Hookes End clinging to the edge of the cliff. The house was visible for miles around but Erin had never been this close. It was tattier than she’d imagined, with greying pebble-dash and rotting windows. There was a scattering of trees with angular quiffs in front of the hostile square facade, and the beds at the front of the house were littered with dead hydrangeas, their rust-coloured heads as soggy as she felt. Erin pulled the brass knocker on the door and cowered under the shelter of the porch. There weren’t any lights on, and the house was eerily still.
Then a dog barked and Erin heard footsteps, the rattling of the latch and the door eventually opened. The woman who answered had a gaunt elegance and was impossible to age. Her greying hair was scraped back into a bun at the nape of her weathered neck. She wore tinted glasses which masked her eyes. She was shorter than Erin and even scrawnier, an oversized olive cable-knit jumper hanging from her pointy shoulders. A dog with wiry brown hair and wonky ears jumped up at her legs. Erin knelt to stroke him.
‘Oblonsky, down,’ the woman said. Her voice was deep and husky.
‘Hello, Mrs Muir, we spoke earlier about the ad,’ she said with as much charm as she could rally through the wall of rain. The lady didn’t respond immediately and Erin couldn’t see whether she was even looking at her from behind the glasses.
‘You’d best come in then.’ Mrs Muir turned slowly and released her white knuckles from the door handle to grab the wall and steady herself. Then she walked with heavy feet down the hall ahead. The hollow thump of her clogs resounded on the brick floor. Erin discarded her boots and their wedge of mud in the least leaky corner of the porch and followed in her socks. It smelt musty, of wet dog and old dishcloths.
A fire was lit in the room at the end of the corridor and the glowing embers were a relief from the gale still clattering against the windows. There were no lights on and Erin had to adjust her eyes to the gloom. Mrs Muir sat down at a round table behind the sofa where Oblonsky had made himself comfortable and gestured impatiently for Erin to sit down too. It was littered with piles of paper, books and newspapers. A faded blue and white teapot with matching cups and saucers sat amid the chaos.
‘Tea?’ Mrs Muir asked, and without waiting for an answer lifted the pot. The lid chinked in her shaking hands.
Erin took in the books that lined the walls. Tatty paperbacks mostly, classics interspersed with detective novels and trashy romances. And lots of hardback encyclopedias and nature books: there was a whole section of the bookcase piled up with butterfly journals.
‘So, what do you think I meant by the advert?’ asked Mrs Muir.
‘Uh, I wasn’t sure.’
‘Really? I was hoping it might stir up all sorts of intrigue among the villagers. Come on, “Eyes Wanted”. You must have had some ideas?’
‘Well, I hoped you weren’t some crazy scientist who needed my eyes for an experiment.’ Erin forced a laugh out.
‘Nope, nothing as exciting as that, I’m afraid.’ Mrs Muir stirred her tea slowly, the spoon clinking against the cup. Without lifting her eyes, she continued in the same dour tone. ‘I have a brain tumour. Six months to live, maybe less. And not content with taking my life, this beast in my head is taking my eyes too. Which is why I need yours.’
‘Oh!’ Erin knew it was an inadequate response. ‘To help with housework? Cooking?’
‘God no, I don’t care about that. To help me finish my book.’ Mrs Muir rifled through the piles of paper on the table until she found what she was looking for. She shook some sheets at Erin. ‘I thought I could do it, but I have only managed a few pages. I cannot see the words and am wasting precious time. So, I need help.’
She looked away and then picked up her teacup; the appeal for help obviously grated. Erin wondered how long it had been since Mrs Muir had had a visitor in this house. She looked down at the filth on the table. A cloud of silvery mould was sprouting from a withered satsuma next to her teacup.
‘I don’t really have any experience with writing,’ Erin began.
‘Can you read?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘Can you type?’
Erin hesitated. ‘Pretty well.’
‘Then that’s all I need. I have already handwritten a lot of it in here.’ She tapped a black leather notebook that was fraying at the edges. ‘Can you start straight away?’
Unable to process the events as fast as they were occurring, Erin stuttered, ‘But – but you don’t know anything about me. I could be anyone.’
Mrs Muir took a sip of her tea and slowly placed the cup back on the table. ‘Erin Turner, daughter of John and Debbie Turner. John – local farmer. Debbie – sells the produce of her thriving kitchen garden. You fled to London with the artist-in-residence at the Driftwood Gallery. He obviously didn’t leave his wife as promised, and so you have come back with your tail between your legs. I can’t imagine the job offers are pouring in. The homewrecker harlot doesn’t go down too well in these parts. But I am willing to take a chance.’ She pushed her glasses to the end of her nose and examined Erin over the top of them. Her smoky irises glistened with mockery.
‘How did you know?’ was all Erin could muster. She was unnerved by this steely precis of her screwed-up life and the second reference to homewrecker that day, but she was quite amused by Mrs Muir’s Sherlock Holmes delivery.
‘People like to talk in this place. Not me, but sometimes I can’t help listening. That Brenda in the shop, she had a field day when you came back. Caused quite a stir, you did. Now, do you want to help me or not?’
‘I guess.’ Erin shrugged; she wasn’t sure, and couldn’t hold her gaze. Her eyes darted around the room and she caught sight of a mass of cobwebs at the top of the window. Dead flies were suspended in its snare and fluttered in the wind that broke through the ill-fitting frame.
‘Good. You can call me Maggie.’
‘OK.’ She didn’t look like a Maggie. Her mum had called her Margaret earlier that day when she’d told her where she was going. It seemed more appropriate somehow.
Mrs Muir – Maggie – sat back in her seat. Her eyes closed as she sucked in a lengthy breath. Was she stifling pain somewhere? Erin looked up at the wall behind her which was cluttered with small butterfly paintings. Acrylics, in vibrant colours with intricate black markings like a stained-glass window. And there were more on the other side of the fireplace. They were more muted, informative-looking; you could see the tatty edges of the pages where someone had torn them out of a book. And above the fireplace was a huge cobalt-blue butterfly in an elaborate gilt frame. The wings had an iridescent sheen that flickered in the light of the fire, and it was hard to tell whether it was a painting or a photograph.
‘I don’t expect you have read any of my Detective Turnpike series?’ Maggie said, bringing Erin’s attention back from the butterflies. She shook her head and stifled a smile – so she really did have detective delusions. ‘This book isn’t like any of them anyway, it’s a different genre altogether.’ Her words were clipped, as if she needed to expel them fast, without consequence. ‘And I would really appreciate it if you didn’t ask questions about its content. I need you to be my eyes, nothing more.’ Her head down, she gathered the pages at the table and held them out, shaking them impatiently until Erin took them.
‘You want me to read this?’ Erin asked.
‘No, I want you to light a fire with it. Of course I want you to read it,’ Maggie snapped.
‘Here? Now?’
‘No, you can take them home and read them tonight. It won’t take you long. I haven’t done much yet, which is why we need to crack on,’ Maggie said. ‘Is that going to be a problem?’
‘Uh, no. ’Course not.’ Erin fiddled with the corners of the pages.
‘Well, off you go then.’ Maggie shooed her away. ‘Come back at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, I like to get going early.’
The rain had weakened to a gentle drizzle as Erin left the house. The sky glowed pewter and a cacophony of drips echoed from tree to tree as she set off down the hill. She knew she should be relieved that she had found a job, but she felt unsettled by it all. Maggie was rude, pretty terrifying in fact. And not much better than Brenda in the shop with that account of her affair with Simon. She really didn’t relish the thought of being stuck in that dilapidated house with her all day, but what was the alternative? Her parents had made it pretty clear that she had to contribute to her living expenses now she was back, and she didn’t have a penny to her name. There was no work at the pub, and no way she was going to ask Brenda for a job in the shop. And there wasn’t anything else in Porthteal, apart from the gallery, of course, but that was Simon’s domain and Kirstin was their only employee and she had been there for as long as Erin could remember.
No, Maggie really was the only way she was going to get enough money to get away from Porthteal. What was it her mum had called her? ‘That hermit up on Lighthouse Hill’. And she was a dying hermit… Would she be expected to nurse Maggie? Surely she wasn’t being paid enough for that? She was not good with bodily functions. She shivered as she recalled the smell of the house. And there was clutter everywhere. Not in a cosy way, more a dirty despondency. And what was with all the butterflies? There was barely a patch of wall that hadn’t been covered with them. And it was horribly dark, with no lights on. Exactly how blind was Maggie? Erin shut her eyes and tried to imagine a life of darkness. She walked for ten paces until she tripped over a tree root and was pitched frighteningly close to the cliff edge. She peered down at the waves thrashing against the rocks below and found herself lurching forward. She had almost reached the tipping point before she pulled herself sharply back onto the path. Her heart thumped inside her chest and she staggered on wobbly legs to the other side of the path. ‘Fuck,’ she said.
She wouldn’t have jumped – things weren’t that bad. The sea roared beneath her and the spray of an especially large wave hit her face. She had a job now, she told herself, a respectable job. She rubbed her face with both hands. She was going to help write a novel. Erin took a steadying breath and turned towards her house. She broke into a run down the path and the rucksack containing Maggie’s pages bounced against her back.
Lansdown Place, 23rd November 1986
Lucas hasn’t been going to school. It has been going on since half-term, apparently. Mrs Brady called us into her office. She said she had left me a few messages, but I rarely answer the phone now: I can’t bear the pity in everyone’s voices, the well-wishers, the do-gooders. I didn’t tell Mrs Brady that, obviously, I just shrugged my shoulders and looked bemused. She spoke to us with sickening benevolence. ‘I know he has had a really hard time of it, so we have given him a lot of leniency but he is going to fail the year if he doesn’t start showing up soon. And he won’t get his O levels, and then he can totally forget about A levels.’
I lost her then. Her voice just started floating out of the top of her head and into the room, echoey and distant. She took my hand at the door and squeezed it tight. ‘We want to help,’ she said.
We had an inevitable row in the car. Richard said I was rude. He said it was all my fault, I was not taking enough interest in my son. And then he laid into Lucas when we got home and Lucas stormed out, slamming the kitchen door so that his picture of a poison dart frog that had been on the fridge for nearly a decade fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and remembered his little face squished up against the glass in the reptile house.
Lucas was just five when I took him to Jersey Zoo. He loved animals, and I had read an article in the dentist’s one day all about the Durrell Zoo for endangered species and had booked it on a whim. I could still feel his little hand in mine as we walked up the gangplank onto our ferry at Poole, his lion rucksack on his back. Our hotel on the waterfront smelt of cabbage, but Lucas loved running up and down the swirly-carpeted corridors. We ate hamburgers in our bedroom both nights and slept curled up together under the apricot flannel sheets.
Orangutans, silverback gorillas, flamingos, meerkats – Lucas had never seen anything like it. But it was the poison dart frogs that really captured his attention. He was totally transfixed by the tiny, luminous creatures. Scarlet, cobalt blue, canary yellow, they clung to the jungle leaves. I read him the blurb about native Indians dipping their arrows in the poison on the frog’s back before hunting, and his eyes grew so wide I thought they might pop out of his head.
I uncurled the edges of the picture that he drew in the hotel that day and stuck it back under the Tower of London fridge magnet. Richard stormed out of the house and I heard his car grumble into action in the driveway.
‘Oh, you’re home.’ Erin was jolted out of her reverie by her mum, who was taking off her coat and boots in the doorway. ‘How did it go? What are you reading?’ She headed across the kitchen and filled the kettle before placing it on the Aga. The beads of water dripping down the side fizzed and danced on the hotplate.
‘Fine.’ Erin was still in Maggie’s world, trying to process what she had just read.
‘Well? What did she want? Is she as barking as they all say? “Eyes Wanted”, I never heard the like.’
‘Er, kind of,’ Erin muttered, her eyes not leaving the manuscript in her lap.
‘What do you mean, kind of?’ Her mum retrieved an already prepared fish pie from the fridge and shooed away the cat who had jumped onto the table to sniff it.
‘She’s not mad, Mum, she’s dying, and going blind, and she wants me to help her.’
‘Who’s dying?’ her dad said, coming into the room and heading for the sink.
‘Erin’s got a job with that Margaret Muir up at Hookes End.’
‘Maggie Muir is dying?’ her dad said, washing his hands in the sink, the water turning brown as it ran through his fingers.
‘She has a brain tumour,’ Erin said.
‘Really? How sad.’
‘And Erin is going to work for her,’ her mum said, and her dad turned around in surprise and walked towards her. ‘John! Your boots are filthy. I mopped the floor earlier.’
‘Sorry, love.’ He wobbled as he bent down to take them off. ‘And what will you be doing for her, Erin?’
‘She wants me to help her write her last book.’
‘Really? How intriguing.’ He pulled out the chair at the table next to Erin and leant over to have a look. Muddy water dripped from his hands onto the top page of Maggie’s manuscript.
‘Oh, Dad! Look what you’ve done.’ Erin wiped the water away, smudging the print as she did so.
‘I just wanted to have a look,’ he said.
‘I can’t let you read it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think Maggie would like that. She has given it to me to read, not my whole family.’ That was an understatement; she shuddered as she imagined the wrath of Maggie if she discovered Erin’s parents had read her manuscript. Quite apart from not wanting to get on the wrong side of her new boss, Erin felt an unexpected surge of protective responsibility for Maggie. She was obviously a private person, and Maggie had entrusted Erin with her words. She closed the manuscript and leant forward, crossing her arms on top of the pages.
‘Suit yourself. Doesn’t she write murder mysteries?’ her dad asked, sitting back in his chair.
‘She does, but she said this is a different genre.’
‘A different genre, indeed? Wow, you sound like a writer already.’
Her mum placed two mugs of tea on the table. Her dad stroked the back of his wife’s hand. ‘Thanks, love,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure about this, Erin. I don’t think you should do it.’ Her mum walked back to the other side of the kitchen and took a white plastic bag out of the fridge. ‘People say she’s totally mad. I don’t like the idea of you alone with her up in that creepy house.’ She pierced a hole in the bag and forked the gelatinous contents into the dog bowl. Drops of blood from the raw meat fell onto the floor. The metallic smell and the chunks of offal turned Erin’s stomach. She looked away.
‘You’ve both been on at me to get a job, and now I have.’
‘Well, yes, love. I think we’re just concerned that Maggie Muir is a bit odd. You must admit, it all sounds a bit strange.’
‘Strange? I thought you’d be delighted. It’s better than the pub, surely? And it’s not as though there are loads of other employment options around here.’ She looked at both of her parents, but neither of them had an answer for this. Her dad just tapped his fingers on the side of his mug and her mum pretended to be looking for something in the fridge. Erin picked up Maggie’s pages and her cup of tea. ‘I’m going to finish reading this upstairs,’ she said, and left the kitchen.
Erin knew she had overreacted, but she was fed up with being treated like she was a disgrace since she’d come back from London. Her mother had a permanently sour look on her face and her dad tried to pretend everything was OK, but she knew how deep his disappointment ran. Not for the first time, Erin wished she had some badly behaved brother or sister with whom she could share the focus of her parents’ undiluted attention. Growing up, she had carried her loneliness around with her like a label. She would watch other kids on the beach huddled together in cahoots. Her dad would try to compensate with the biggest sandcastle, which had multiple turrets and a moat that filled with water with the incoming tide. But she’d watched the family cricket games and running races with an envy that gnawed away at her insides.
She’d had friends at school, but never a best friend. She was never in the inner circle – that was the domain of the pretty girls with high ponytails. Erin was not pretty. She was scrawny with wide hazel eyes and hair that stuck up like one of those grass potato-heads. Her parents called her ‘Owly’ as a baby, when her startled look was endearing. But she didn’t ‘grow into her eyes’ like they said she would. Her hair couldn’t be tamed either. She had a double crown, resulting in stubborn lumpy bits on the top of her head which refused to conform to the ponytail shackle. She finally gave up trying at fifteen and cut it all off and she’d had short spiky hair ever since.
Erin had asked her parents repeatedly why they hadn’t had any more children and they came up with a myriad of responses: ‘We couldn’t afford it, darling’; ‘You were all we needed’; ‘We just never thought about it’.
Then one day her mum had snapped. Erin was thirteen and whining about Becky Rogers’ sister who had passed her driving test and driven Becky into Truro to go clothes shopping, and her mum had swung round from the kitchen sink where she was peeling potatoes. ‘I’m sorry you don’t have a sister to take you shopping, Erin. I really am,’ she hissed. ‘We just didn’t, OK? What’s done is done. We can’t go back. So please could you just leave it alone!’
Erin never asked about siblings again.
Now she could hear the muffled tones of her parents downstairs and the clattering of dishes. Her dad would be standing up for her, quietly trying to convince her mum that this job was a good idea.
The November night had drawn in, and the rain was hammering again at the bedroom window. The Turners did not believe in upstairs heating, and smoky clouds of breath puffed out of Erin’s mouth. She pulled the curtains together, shutting out the darkness and the whistling draught that rattled through its leaky frame. She climbed into her bed in her clothes and pulled the duvet up over her legs. Then she picked up Maggie’s manuscript and continued to read.
Lansdown Place, 30th November 1986
I found Mr Gilbert on the floor in the larder this morning. I had been having a good day; it was one of those beautifully frosty mornings when everything sparkles. I walked the dog and bought myself an iced bun on my way home as a reward and settled down with it, a coffee and Good Housekeeping. I cannot face the paper yet. And then I spotted his leg, poking out from the under the larder door, and I was instantly back there, his body lying drenched on the banks of the river. I couldn’t catch my breath and the iced bun stuck in my throat. I doubted my sanity then: the police still had Mr Gilbert, he was their only forensic evidence. I crawled to the larder on my hands and knees, expecting him to disappear as I got closer, but he didn’t. I picked him up and then I realised that he was far too clean to be Mr Gilbert, and he wasn’t wearing the blue scarf that Lucas had knitted for him at school. He was the replacement Mr Gilbert, bought in reserve, never used. And I remembered Skye’s teddy bear picnics in the larder. I spent the rest of the day in her bed again with Mr Gilbert. But her smell on the pillow is fading and I don’t know how to get it back.
Daylight hadn’t yet penetrated the heavy slate sky and it was ominously dark when Erin left the house the next morning. Her dad was already out on his rounds when she came downstairs and she had snuck out while her mum was in the bathroom. Tregotha Farm was down a long drive, it took a couple of minutes to walk up to the main road, and from there it was a further ten minutes into the sleeping village of Porthteal, where the street lights still flickered their amber glare. She passed the Angel pub on her left and then the Driftwood Gallery on the other side of the street. She tried to walk past without looking; she could sense the painting there and nearly made it to the end of the building before she looked back. And there it was, balanced on an easel in the bay window. The heavy oils glistened at her, the fishermen hauling in their nets against a foaming teal sea. Erin’s heart lurched as she remembered Simon’s calloused hands holding the brush. And the bump on the side of his finger as he traced the dimple at the bottom of her back. And then she thought of the last time she had seen him, the red lipstick and shiny black hair of the lady in his embrace, the stripy tights of the little girl, her giggles as he flung her up onto his shoulders. She swallowed down the emotion that curdled in her stomach and headed for the track behind the gallery.
The sun had peeked through the gloom by the time Erin arrived at Hookes End. Her cheeks were tingling and her bones warmed by the steep climb up the hill. She knocked on the door and when no one answered, she tried the handle.
‘Hello, Maggie, are you there?’ she called from the hallway.
‘In here,’ came a voice from the room where they had sat yesterday.
Oblonsky ran out into the hallway to greet her. Erin stroked his matted ears and followed him down the corridor. She had been too preoccupied to take it all in the day before. There were more butterflies – miniature black and white etchings, the intricate detail on their wings accentuated by the lack of colour. They were arranged haphazardly around a mirror, gold brocade peeled off the surround, the glass so tarnished and purpling that Erin’s reflection was a blur. A marble Ganesh sat proudly on a rickety side table beneath it, around him piles of unopened mail, bills mostly. And keys – there must have been five different sets, nest. . .
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