Authors: Sam Baker

0007464355 (40 page)

‘Dreadful.’

‘You’d feel a lot worse if not for those.’ Gil pointed at an array of tubes and catheters running in and out of her body. Told her which was saline, which drip fed her morphine, which machine monitored her heart, which recorded her blood pressure hourly. There was no mention of the catheter vanishing over the edge of the mattress to take all the liquid out of her.

‘How do you know all that?’ she asked. ‘Is there no end to your journalistic prowess?’

‘Tom told me.’

‘He’s here?’

Gil smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s here. I offered him a room at the cottage, but here is closer. He persuaded them to give him a bed. Well, he is a consultant. Quite a good one, apparently.’

‘A consultant?’

‘Paediatrics. He’s been helping out. I believe they’d like him to stay. Smart London surgeon and all that.’

‘Gil …’

He knew what she was going to ask because he tried to shake her question away. For someone who claimed to like silence he talked a lot. He’d been to see his grandchildren and his younger daughter had finally accepted him as a Facebook friend. She was a teacher in London in an inner-city school.

‘Gil …’ Helen tried to interrupt, but he was in full throttle.

‘I’m thinking of writing a book. Did I tell you that? I thought of writing about the cave systems under the Dales. Miles and miles of twisting tunnels and shafts. Then I thought, why not write a book about the Scar itself? It has the most amazing legends, you know. The Victorians found bones at the bottom of the drop. They decided it must have been used for sacrifices. That’s probably not true. Unless it is. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write
the
book.’

He ate the last of the grapes and looked apologetically at the skeleton of stalks on her bedside table. ‘The Scar sits on top of limestone shafts you know. Much too dangerous to explore, but I don’t doubt some of those contain bones too. Human bones, quite possibly.’

Helen looked up. The sudden movement hurt her head, and her neck, and several other bits. She closed her eyes until the pain subsided. Was Gil saying what she thought he was saying?

She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand.

‘The police want to talk to you. Tom’s managed to fend them off so far, but he’ll have to let them in eventually. In my experience, not that I have much, it’s best to keep things simple … Apparently, the night you fell, you said you saw the boy. The one who died in Iraq? He was standing at the top. You waved to each other?’

She nodded and Gil glanced away, embarrassed.

‘The police are taking that as proof of a breakdown.’ Gil took a deep breath. ‘Your husband died in a fire. Well, so you believed. Now he’s just missing. The police think, well, they think he might have been involved. You’ve seen terrible things. Some people in the village are saying you couldn’t take it. You threw yourself from the top. That’s made it into the papers.’

Helen looked at him.

He smiled. ‘Now I know, for future reference, that if I ever find myself in the middle of a media firestorm, then drugged out of my head is a good place to be. Every amateur psychologist in the country has analysed your mental state. Personally, I’d stick with grief, memory loss and that post-traumatic stuff you’re not keen on. Because that’s what everyone else has already decided.’

He kissed her carefully on the cheek, let his hand very slightly brush hers and told her Tom would be along in a moment. At the door, he turned and grinned. ‘You might not want to look at yourself in the mirror for a while.’

It hurt to grin back but she did.

Gil was wrong though. For the first time in years she felt able to face herself. She was her. Her, with damage and experiences and a portfolio good enough to land her a job anywhere she wanted. All the same, this new her felt as if those years had never happened. Or, if they had, they happened to someone else. Someone she quite liked, but wouldn’t want to admit being slightly afraid of … So now she waited, and even the drugs being dripped into her weren’t enough to still the butterflies in her stomach, or take away the feeling that she was waiting beside the war memorial, on time this time, and about to turn seventeen.

June 2014

Reports that English journalist Art Huntingdon, wanted for murder of Carl Ackerman, seen in Belize prove unfounded French police say.

February 2015

@TimeOutLondon
Putting my Hand in the Fire
, the first major retrospective of reportage by Helen Lawrence, opens at the ICA on Monday.

Acknowledgements

In no particular order, I owe a huge debt to …

The authors of the many books I read in the course of my research. They suffered so I didn’t have to leave the comfort of my spare room:

Journalism
Joe Sacco

The Place At The End Of The World
Janine Di Giovanni

Ghosts By Daylight
Janine di Giovanni

On Photography
Susan Sontag

It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life Of Love And War
Lynsey Addario

On the Front Line: the Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin

The much-missed Marie Colvin for the quote that precedes Part Two, taken from a speech made at St Bride’s in London on November 10, 2010 in honour of the war wounded. Her untimely death in Syria on February 22, 2012 was one of the inspirations for this book.

The ever-generous Caitlin Moran for permission to use her quote about Shining Girls from
The Times
magazine, July 13, 2013. And to my brave and brilliant friend, Lauren Laverne, for the ‘box’ analogy. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Which is why I stole it wholesale.

The man who, when called upon for advice on how long a body had to burn to eliminate all traces of DNA said, ‘Where’s the body?’

The woman whose professional expertise and generous help enabled me to write the character, Caroline.

The far-too-many women whose stories mirror Helen Graham/Lawrence’s own. Friends, friends of friends, people I met through social media or my work as a journalist – who generously shared their own experiences with me.

Sandra Horley, the tireless powerhouse behind domestic violence charity, Refuge, and whose book
The Charm Syndrome,
has been invaluable.

The very patient Mark Ridley who, in 2011, bid to have his name in one of my novels as part of an author’s fund-raising campaign after the Japanese earthquake. Neither of us knew he would have to wait quite so long.

My agent, Jonny Geller, editor Lynne Drew, publicist Louise Swannell and all the teams at Curtis Brown and Harpercollins. You have the patience of several saints.

Almost last, and definitely not least, Anne Brontë’s
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
. In my opinion, the most original and radical of the novels written by the Brontë sisters. This is in no way an attempt to rework that great novel of 1848, more a stepping off point for looking at the many ways in which the social and economic status of women has changed in the last 170 years. And the ways in which it hasn’t.

And finally, Jon who’s been living with this project and its repercussions for far too long. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see the back of it. Thank you.

Reading Group Questions

How much, if at all, do you think Gil’s fascination with Helen has to do with his estrangement from his daughters?
Do you think it would be easy to disappear from your own life and leave no trace in the digital age?
What do you think makes Helen decide to trust Gil? Should Gil have rung the police once he worked out who Helen was?
Helen and Art’s marriage is a difficult one. Did you believe that she would stick with him – and go back to him? What did the book highlight about domestic violence?
What do you think the significance is of the little boy in Iraq?
Did you notice parallels between the main themes of this book and Anne Brontë’s
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
?

Author Q&A

A Q&A with author Sam Baker

Where did the starting point for this book come?

I have long been fascinated by
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
and never really understood why, whilst still read, it hasn’t endured in quite the same way as
Jane Eyre
and
Wuthering Heights
. One theme I really felt had endured was the issue of control within relationships. Also, someone I admired hugely as a journalist was killed covering the early years of the Syria conflict and that person’s courage and dedication made a huge impression.

How easy or difficult was it to use a classic novel as an inspiration?

Extremely difficult, as I found out. I tried only to take the themes I felt still resonated and the structure of the original. I wanted to look at what had changed for women and what hadn’t. More than we think, less than we know.

What research did you have to do for this book?

An enormous amount of research – far more than I banked on if I’m absolutely honest. I learned about photography and studied the lives of several war photographers, researched the historical incidents that form the linchpin of the plot points and obviously interviewed countless strong women who have emerged from all kinds of abusive relationships, as well as doing endless reading around the Brontës. Not to mention having to research how to go off line, or at least keep as low a digital profile as is now possible.

How much, if at all, did your background as an magazine editor contribute to your decision to give these characters the careers they have?

Not particularly. In the case of the original Brontë Helen, she is an artist who had the temerity to not even paint in watercolour but in oils. Her art not only gives her a possible income source at a time when a married woman was not legally entitled to one, but she chose to do so with the most masculine of materials. I chose the role of war photographer for Helen because I wanted a reflection of that, a role that felt very male in a man’s world. As for Gil, he had to have a profession (or have had a profession) that gave him the necessary investigative skills and made his ‘investigation’ of Helen not too stalkery – either a retired journalist or a policeman. The introduction of digital into press photography and the changes that technology wrought in journalism over the last decades played into the other digital themes in the novel.

Do you have a routine when you are writing or is every day different?

Because I have also launched a digital platform for women called The Pool, every day is different. Weekends, when possible, are spent writing in a cafe with my partner.

What’s next?

I plan to stick with this new darker approach for the next book.

For more from Sam Baker, including her answers to the Reading Group Questions, go to
www.sambaker.co.uk

About the Author

Sam Baker grew up in Hampshire and after a degree in politics at Birmingham University became a journalist, going on to edit some of the UK’s biggest magazines.

For six years she was Editor in Chief of Red magazine, where she set up the Red Hot Women Awards recognising achievement across politics, science, tech, the arts, media and charity, as well as championing support for Refuge, the charity for victims of domestic abuse.

In 2015 she co-founded and launched The Pool with Lauren Laverne, the online platform that makes inspiring and original content for busy women.

Sam is married to the novelist Jon Courtenay Grimwood and lives in Winchester. When she’s not working or writing she escapes by devouring crime novels or watching box sets.

Follow her on Twitter
@sambaker

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

http://www.harpercollins.ca