a kind of vanishing

Although this novel is not autobiographical, the element that comes directly from my personal experience is location. I have lived in both Hammersmith and Bermondsey and have a particular association with each borough: one very good and one pretty awful. These experiences are echoed in how I have chosen to use the two settings.

As a reader I am very affected by places and the sense of past events they hold. So I deliberately set the story in an actual location to close the gap between fiction and 'reality': a gap I see as pretty tight anyway. It was important to me to specifically set the characters in locations such as St Peters Square in Hammersmith and the Old Kent Road in South London. This means that, should you wish, you can go there, or you may already be familiar with them. I see this as another way of reaching readers and of giving life to the story.

Sussex holds a special significance for me. I had very happy summer holidays in Brighton in the mid-sixties in what seemed like constant hot sunshine, mostly sprawled with a book on the grass at Saltdean Lido. I did my first and second degrees in Brighton too. All in all, I have lived in the area three times: each occasion marking a significant and positive point in my life.

The Tide Mills have a different role to the London locations. They are the ruins of a once busy village where people lived and worked. I suggest in the novel that others think them dangerous (and so they prove to be) but for Eleanor they are safe. She is happier with the creatures of her imagination than with real people, because they provide her with the space to be herself.

I too crave this kind of space, and frequently return to the Tide Mills. I came upon them by accident when walking my dog, and I often go back there. For me now, along with the ghosts of the inhabitants, there are the ghosts of my characters; I wanted to give this sense to readers too.

It seemed natural to have a character labouring under the difficulties of Parkinson’s Disease as this is something my family and I live with daily. My mother has had Parkinson’s since she was sixty, over twenty years now. Partly I wanted to describe my Mum’s reality. A great communicator, her illness means she can no longer do this as effectively for herself. We have to write the cards and often make the phone calls, as well as do the talking at teatime visits.

I am hugely involved with caring for her, and have become acutely aware of the ignorance - in care terms - of the widely different symptoms associated with the illness. I wanted to tell people how it is for Mum and others like her. I have always kept away from using a novel as a means to make a point, political or otherwise. I don’t think this ever works. The theme has to be from the inside out - not bolted on -or the story suffers.

From the start it was natural to the shape of the story to 'give' Parkinson’s to Kath. She is a brave, yet flawed woman, determined to face the rigours of the world whilst living with a degenerative disease that constantly undermines her. Kath’s illness is part of the fabric of the story, not the point of it, as Parkinson's is part of the fabric of a person's life and does not sum them up.

I chose to set some of the story in 1968 because this was the year I first took notice of the news. I was ten that year. Before this I had been vaguely aware of events like the Aberfan Disaster and the Kray Twins trial, but I really remember being halted in my tracks by the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations. My understanding was relatively domestic: both men were fathers and, particularly at that age, I was very attached to my own Dad. I collected photos of Kennedy in a scrapbook, and read the papers for several days after. That year marked a definite step change in my growing up and to making a connection with a wider world.

Although I drew broadly on my personal experiences when writing this, it is by no means autobiographical. Once the writing process was underway, the housework stopped happening and the characters took on a life of their own.