1. In my novel, The Fascination, one character – Tilly – doesn’t grow a single inch after a violent accident in her childhood. Only after writing this did I suddenly recall something from my own past that may have influenced the story.
At the age of eleven I was in a private swimming pool when the ceiling lights proved faulty. I’d been on a rubber float, but as I paddled through the water my fingers started stinging; the strangest prickling sensation. At the time I’d assumed it was the chlorine in the water. I should get out straightaway. However, when I touched the sides of the pool I had a shock and was thrown back in again. My sight was gone. All I could see was black and white zig zag lines, and it felt as if my body was vibrating up and down. My brother (who was younger) tried to help me escape by picking up a pole by which to drag me from the water. But the pole was made of metal. He also had a jolting shock, and then ran off into the night.
Obviously, I survived. Someone came and switched the lights off. But I was ill for some quite time … and never grew another inch. My six siblings are all well above the average in height, making me the ‘little one.’
2. Another book-related matter connects to a house called Hampton Court in Herefordshire. When I was a little girl, I always begged for whoever was driving to slow down as we passed the ancient house, so I see more easily the castellated gothic structure that stood some way beyond the road. Some years later, when I’d gone to university but was home for the summer, I was offered a job as a cleaner at the house. And what an experience that was. Passages lined with suits of armour. Heads of deer on panelled walls, and many other animals. There was also a room I really hated going into because it had such a cold and malign atmosphere. Many years afterwards that experience informed my descriptions of a haunted country house in my first novel. More recently, it’s influenced scenes in The Fascination, with my imagined Dorney Hall having a room with panelled walls, with the stuffed heads of animals … and other curiosities of a more sinister persuasion.
3. I’d never have the confidence to perform on a stage, but I have always been entranced by the glamour of the theatre. I’m sure this stems back to the place I’ve always thought of as ‘my grandmother’s ballroom’.
My grandfather ran an agricultural supply business with shopfront, offices and stores based in a grand old building originally built as a Victorian coaching inn in the rural town of Leominster. They lived in rooms on upper floors, with endless corridors and rooms running off throughout the building. One of these was a ballroom, though it was never used as such since the coaching inn closed down. I recall it as a room filled up with iron beds and tables, and sacks of grains and other foodstuff. Rats skulked in the shadows. Cobwebs hung from plaster mouldings of the ceiling like lace. The air was filled with swirling dust that shone with diamond motes of light. The memory is magical and it haunts me to this day, and now the dereliction of a majestic old building with a room that has a stage used as a theatre at one end is reborn in Linden House – a house in Chiswick, featured in The Fascination.
(Today, the Lion Ballroom has been sold and the room is beautifully restored. It can be visited for private and public events. I must confess I’ve never been. I prefer to remember the ballroom from my childhood. www.lionballroomleominster.co.uk)
4. My first job in London was as an assistant to the editor of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine. It was the oddest job, with very little actual work. But there was lots of fun, with free tickets to the theatre, and once even being asked to model for a feature depicting Christmas through the ages. Here I am as a maid in Linley Sambourne House in London’s Kensington. I often think of that location when I’m writing and describing Victorian interiors.
5. Dressing up as a Victorian is not something I go for on a regular basis, but there was also the time when some friends surprised me with a birthday outing, to be photographed with them as if in the Wild West. Afterwards I put the picture on a website I curate called The Virtual Victorian, claiming it showed a distant relative of mine, Zylphia Fox, who’d offered succour to the soldiers of the Confederate army during the Civil War. I’m amazed to say some people actually believed the story and the pictures genuine. I didn’t have the heart to say it was an April’s Fool. Perhaps one day those images will inspire yet another Victorian-themed novel … but one based in America.
