Touched
Touched is a short, atmospheric novel with a supernatural element. It’s a classy ghost story, published by Hammer! I think of it as Mad Men meets The Village of the Damned. I wanted to write a plotted novel in which all is not quite as it seems, and where one of the central characters is normal and the other is quite strange, or at least appears to be…. Its protagonists are Rowena Crale and her daughter Evangeline, known as Eva, who move to a small village outside London to a house that resists their renovations. The presence of Eva’s beloved grandmother, who has lived in the house, is never very far away, and Rowena’s neighbour Gregory is far too attractive… Then one by one people start to disappear. I wanted it to be chilling and gripping, but infused with desire.
Please tell us about the character of Rowena.
Rowena is very much a woman of her time, yet in some ways ahead of her time. The novel is set in 1963, before the ‘swinging sixties’ took over, and Rowena is educated and beautiful, but repressed by being a wife during this era, and a mother of five. I saw her very clearly from the beginning – yet she wasn’t based on anyone I know: in fact, she was one of those rare characters who arrive fully formed. She makes mistakes, yet I sympathise with her. In her desire for Gregory, she takes her eye off what is really happening to her daughters. I see her as a woman who cannot truly shine in the era in which she lives, though Gregory does appreciate her true qualities as, ultimately, do her children.
Please tell us about the inspiration for the story?
The story came to me quite quickly once Hammer had asked me to write a novel for them. It had never occurred to me to write anything supernatural, and yet I started to realise that all my novels are haunted in one sense or another – in their atmospheres, and in the effects of the past, or by lost people. The setting for Touched came to me first – we had visited the extremely pretty village in Hertfordshire where I’d spent my first four years, and I was struck by how exactly like the village of my memory it was, down to the smallest details. The Village of the Damned had also been filmed there, and it seemed to me that its perfection could almost be creepy. On that bright Green, I saw a girl dressed in Victorian clothes, and that was my starting point… everything grew from there.
Are you a fan of Hammer’s other offerings? If so which are your favourites?
Yes! I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve read, but my favourite is Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate. I don’t always like her work – some of it I love, some of it I really don’t. But this one was her at her strange best, with powerful prose and oddities, and I like the way it couldn’t be by anyone else.
What frightens you the most?
Real life fears about people I care about. Other than that, I’m pretty tough when it comes to films and novels – I like horror, and the ghostly. Certainly, being on my own at night in the country makes me scared, even though I grew up in the wilds. There’s something about country houses….
Why are cottages in remote villages such delicious base for any scary story?
Oh, what is scarier, really? Anyone and anything could be about; villages are more exposed to the elements, and older houses definitely have movement, depending on the seasons and temperature, and possibly because of unseen forces. If you live in a remote place, you get used to all sorts of creaks and bangs, though some of it really is chilling. Also, you get odd people in remote places; and a lot of exposure to them. It’s not like a big town where there’s a measure of anonymity. Cottages in remote villages are exposed in all ways.
How do you personally prepare to write chilling and deeply creepy fiction?
You know, strangely it just came naturally to me! I didn’t prepare – I wrote very intensely, and with a deadline, and just found myself plunged into that world, and inhabiting it, and I always seem to explore chilling, off-centre and even somewhat perverse territory! My writing’s always darker than I think I am, or appear to be as a person, and other people comment on this.
What is next for you?
I’m writing a longer novel, set in London, where the past informs the present in surprising ways, and where a woman is in trouble. But what seems like help turns out to be as dangerous as it is enticing. I don’t want to say too much, because I’m still working on it. Watch this space!