Q. Where did you get the idea for THE ACCIDENT?
I was pregnant with my son when the idea first came to me. I wanted to write a novel about ‘keeping secrets’ but I had no idea who would be keeping the secrets or what those secrets would be. Then one day, when I was walking back from the supermarket – waddling along under the weight of my groceries – the first three lines popped into my head:
‘Coma. There’s something innocuous about the word, soothing almost in the way it conjures up the image of a dreamless sleep. Only Charlotte doesn’t look as though she’s sleeping to me.’
I heard Susan’s voice as clear as day and I knew immediately that she was the mother of a teenaged girl who’d stepped in front of a bus. I kept repeating those three lines over and over again as I walked home so I wouldn’t forget them, then frantically scribbled them down. I kept writing and, less than two hours later, I had the first chapter.
I didn’t write any more until a couple of months after my son’s birth. As a new mum in a new town I was lonely, and very sleep deprived, and I missed writing so, in his naps, I started plotting the rest of the story. I finished the first draft in five months.
Q. How did your personal history inform the novel?
Like Susan I was once in an abusive relationship. Unlike Susan it wasn’t physically or sexually abusive but it was emotionally abusive and, over the course of the four years it lasted, it changed me as a person. It took me a long time to find the courage to leave the relationship, and even longer to heal from it.
When my son was born I was overwhelmed by how protective I felt of him. I barely slept for fear something might happen to him in the night and I watched him like a hawk in the day. When I started plotting THE ACCIDENT I began to wonder how I’d react if my son was in danger from something very different from SIDS or choking or falling or any of the other ‘normal’ dangers. What if there was a person who meant him harm? I never really believed that that would happen but I channelled those fears into Susan who’d been through a much more horrific experience than me. What if she’d taken something precious from her abusive ex and he wanted revenge? And what if that revenge was wreaked on her own child?
Q. Why did you use diary entries alongside the main thread of the story?
I felt it was really important that the reader understands why Susan is the way she is. She’s nervy, neurotic and paranoid and, without the diary entries, it would be hard to be sympathetic towards her. During the course of the novel Susan moves from whole to broken, to whole again and I thought it was important for the reader to see – via her diary entries – how very broken she was. Both threads of the stories build at the same time and I hope the climaxes are as satisfying for the reader as they were to write.
Q. Your main character, Susan, is a very ‘unreliable narrator’. Did you find her difficult to write?
Not really. Once I’d heard Susan’s voice in my head the words just spilled out of me. That said there were times – when she was lashing out at people who didn’t deserve it – when I just wanted to shake her and tell her to trust people, but I totally understood why she was the way she was and why it was so important that she discover what had happened to Charlotte in her own way.
At the beginning of the novel Susan says that she feels like she was ‘sleep walking’ through her own life but, by the end, she’s totally in charge of it. That was incredibly satisfying to write.
Q. Did you always know how the novel was going to end? Did you ever consider an alternative?
No, I always knew that James would die at the end and Charlotte would wake up. I did consider Susan killing him but I didn’t want her to become as vicious as he was. I also umm’d and ahh’d about whether or not Brian should return to the hospital room. I didn’t want him to be a ‘hero’ and save the day but I liked the idea that the habit that had annoyed Sue so much at the beginning of the novel (of him always returning to collect something he’d forgotten) actually helped save her life at the end. I also thought that, given how Sue had done so much over the course of the novel without Brian’s support, it would prove his love for her if he came to her aid.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to my editor Lydia Vassar-Smith and the team at Avon/HarperCollins for their support, encouragement and enthusiasm. You transformed this book from a figment of my imagination to something tangible and I couldn’t be more delighted.
Massive thanks to Madeleine Milburn for supporting me every step of the way. You kept believing, even when my own belief faltered, and that marks you out as a very special agent indeed.
A big thank you to my friends and family – particularly my parents Reg and Jenny Taylor and my brother and sister David and Rebecca – for continuing to ask ‘how’s the novel?’ even when the answer was little more than a sigh. And lots of love to Suz, Leah, Sophie, LouBag, Steve, Guinevere, Angela, Ana, Nan and Granddad.
Grateful thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who helped me out with research – particularly Andrew Parsons for his hospital procedure/drug expertise and Kimberley Mills for sharing her experience of caring for a coma patient. Thank you – and sorry – to Emily Harborow. The video research footage you surreptitiously filmed for me ended up on the editing room floor but I’m sure I’ll be able to use it in another book.
Big thanks to Jim Ross for taking my lovely new author photos and to Rebecca Butterworth for doing my makeup.