Letters to the Lost (55 page)

The present-day storyline was trickier in that it needed to be fitted around the past one, so I had to keep half my mind on structure. At the start, with Stella and Dan’s story still so vivid in my mind, Jess and Will were very much secondary characters whose main purpose was to discover and reveal what had happened seventy years ago, but as time went on they really sprang off the page for me and their story took on a life of its own.

If you could write a letter to anyone from the past who would it be?

My grandmother; my mother’s mother. My mum was only ten when she died so I never knew her, but I’ve always felt her presence in my life, I think because her absence had such a huge impact on my mum’s. She was a remarkable woman: a doctor, who graduated from Glasgow University with her degree in medicine in 1933 (and was awarded a gold medal for her thesis) and spent her career working in public health. I’d like to write to her and ask about the challenges she must have faced as a female medical student in the 1920s and 30s (Were there many other women in her year? What was the attitude of the men in her classes?) and, of course, about her experiences of being a doctor during the war, as well as a first-time mother. My mum was born at the end of 1940 and her mother went back to work almost immediately, partly because there was a shortage of doctors to look after the civilian population, but also because she loved her work and (unlike Stella!) wanted a life outside the home, in a time when this was relatively uncommon. She sounds like such an interesting person. How wonderful it would be if, somehow, I could receive a letter from her in return . . .

You have a pinterest board with loads of great photos on it, including some of film stars who inspired you while you were writing the novel. Who would you love to see playing the leads if
Letters to the Lost
was made into a film?

I’d be a Casting Director’s nightmare as I tend to take my inspiration from actors from all different eras. So, I’d need Richard Gere in his
Yanks
incarnation (circa 1978) for Dan, and
Four Weddings
-vintage Hugh Grant (1994) for Will. Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress, would have to be Stella (if she could do a good English accent), but I’ve never come across anyone who looks or sounds like the Jess of my imagination. (If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them – and add them to my Pinterest board!)

What novels inspired you as you were writing?

Completely by coincidence, the day after I started writing the book the postman delivered a signed copy of Kate Atkinson’s
Life After Life
, sent by my lovely friend Abby Green. I don’t think any writer could help but be inspired by Atkinson’s effortlessly vivid writing. She makes it seem so easy and natural; having her voice in my head as I plunged into those first few chapters gave me a big boost of confidence.

I’m also a huge fan E.M. Delafield’s
Diary of a Provincial Lady
and its sequels, and love the way she juxtaposes gravely serious events with small domestic detail. And I can’t help but be influenced by books I first fell in love with as a teenager – the big, sprawling stories of Rosamunde Pilcher, Jilly Cooper, Maeve Binchy. Books you would fall into and lose yourself for days, emerging to find that reality was a pale and faded imitation of the world you’d discovered between the covers. I learned so much from those books – including what I wanted to do for a living when I was older!