I live in London, but the setting for my debut novel, The Twins, was largely inspired by my childhood in Suffolk. My sister, brother and I lived with our mother in a tiny cottage in the middle of a pine forest. The deer would often come right up to our front door in the early mornings. We had a couple of ponies, cats, rabbits and goats. My mother allowed us freedom to roam the forest on our own, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding bareback. As children, we lived inside our own fairy-tale world.
Suffolk, particularly coastal Suffolk, has continued to inspire me, and several of my other novels are set in its bleakly beautiful landscape: Without You features Orford, with its castle, and its myth of the Wild Man. How It Ends begins in the 1950s and follows the American Delaney family as they relocate to a U.S. airbase in Suffolk. War hero Todd brings along his wife, and their 12-year-old twins, Hedy and Christopher. Hedy, a tough tomboy, is protective of her gentle brother, who suffers from extreme scoliosis and writes fiction. As the family tries to adapt to their new life, strange events begin to occur: bright lights appear in the sky; people lurk in the surrounding forest; screams rise from underground. After a traumatic incident rips her life and family apart, Hedy tries to find out what happened, using her brother’s unfinished story. Seven Months of Summer is another Suffolk story featuring two young people, Kit and Summer, who meet on a backpacking trip of a lifetime. But when Kit returns home and tries to find Summer, the person he thought he knew doesn’t seem to exist. Heartbroken that she lied to him, he moves to the Suffolk coast to start again, little knowing that she is living just a couple of miles away.
My other novels have different settings: The Other Me, is part historical fiction, a time-slip novel about the bonds of parenthood and the murky depths that guilt drags us into. The Stranger is equal parts mystery, thriller and love story, about a woman who, after her husband’s tragic death, discovers he wasn’t who she thought he was, and who then upsets the locals when she lets a stranger into her life, a migrant with a mysterious past. The Bench is a love story about an American girl and an English boy who meet in Atlantic City; after a white lie parts them, they go on to make separate lives, so when they meet again by chance many years later, they are torn by desire and duty. In The Central Line, Cora falls for the man who rescues her drunk daughter on the underground and brings her home safely, but she tries hard to resist him, because her troubled teenage daughter believes she’s fallen in love with him too. In Identical, I return to the psychological thriller genre. It’s a dark, twisty story about identical twins swapping lives, with devastating results.
When I’m not writing or reading, I dance Argentine tango. It is a huge passion and I’ve been dancing it for over 20 years. I love the music, the connection with another person, the focus it requires and the freedom of expression it allows. I’m still trying to work out how to incorporate tango into one of my novels. Another pleasure is walking my dog – again, it gives me a sense of space, connection and freedom and acts as a welcome relief to all my hours spent sitting alone at my computer. I also like to bake cakes (and eat them!)
I’ve been writing poetry and short stories since I could hold a pencil, but it took me a long time to believe that I might be able to write fiction for a living. And I hope I offer the message to anyone out there who wants to get into print, that it can happen, at any time.