The morning my mother died she asked me to tell her about the next book I would write. I said I had an idea about an archaeologist alone under Lincolnshire’s vast skies and she approved. True, the outline was a little different then, but Rachel and her story still caught her imagination.
It seemed only right, then, to include a character based on my mother in Endless Skies; an intelligent, perceptive octogenarian with a keen interest in people and a huge sense of fun. I called her Esther, the name on my grandmother’s birth certificate that she never used.
Even Esther’s physical attributes were the same as my mum’s. The platinum bob, the pearl handled walking stick and the desperately poor eyesight. But in the early drafts Esther had a very different life story, although I drew great comfort from Rachel’s growing friendship with her.
Without my mother’s faith and encouragement I can honestly say I would never have had a book published. She read my embryonic attempts at novel writing and gave constructive criticism – despite my father being the writer in the family – he never really understood romantic fiction and just seemed slightly puzzled by the whole thing. But Mum egged me on, and when she thought I had a strong enough book suggested I enter The Alan Titchmarsh Show’s People’s Novelist competition. I am absolutely sure it was one of her proudest moments when I reached the final and I just wish she could have travelled to London to see it with her own eyes.
She was also a huge influence on what I write. She devoured library books (large print in her latter years) and used to get very fed up with what she’d call ‘boy meets girl, they fall out three times then get married’ formulaic romances. As a reader she wanted so much more. What neither of us realised was that at the time it would have been far easier for me to find a publisher had I been closer to the mainstream in my chosen genre.
As a result she didn’t live long enough to see my first publishing deal, but I have a feeling she knows. I think she would have been really proud of Another You and would have enjoyed reading it. Endless Skies became a companion piece – my second book with Sapere – both contemporary romances looking back to World War Two.
It was when I made the decision to rewrite Endless Skies this way my mother’s wartime experience came into its own. Or rather one pivotal point she shares with Esther. Both were bright grammar schools girls living in rural communities who could no longer safely travel to school because of the bombing. My mother spent a terrifying air raid trapped on a train in a siding in the middle of Cardiff and her parents said ‘never again’.
While my mother went into the civil service at fourteen (not much older than she was in this picture), Esther’s only local option was a job in the laundry at the RAF base just outside her village. This was home to two squadrons of brave and often reckless Polish airmen, and Esther could only stand by and watch as the most tender and poignant love story unfolded in front of her eyes. A story which, seventy years later, had the power to change Rachel’s life.
