It's hard to pick a favourite scene when looking
back over your own book, but there is one scene which I recall the most as it
was the first scene I wrote in my head.
It was March 2018 and I had just moved to Margate
after 10 years living in London, and was still working in Hackney. My first day of the commute was in the wake
of fresh snowfall but I headed into town regardless, one of the few people on
my train at 6.50am. By 3pm snow had
fallen across Kent, ice lining the rails so fast they couldn’t clear it and all
trains had been suspended. With no way
of getting back to Margate, I trudged back into Hackney where I worked and met
up with my friend and work colleague who had offered me a bed for the night at
hers.
But first we would need to drink a fair amount at
the local pub, The Old Ship, on Mare Street and wait out the snowstorm
outside. Some time after 11pm, warmed
with red wine, we headed out and towards her home via Broadway Market and
another pub stop. Our journey took us
through a deserted park called London Fields which provided a short cut from
Mare Street across to Hackney Road.
As we walked through the empty park in the snow I
felt a buzz in my brain that wasn’t alcohol.
I thought how terrifying it would be to be followed through the
park. There were pathways disappearing
into the dark and the snow had muffled all noise. It was creepy. And I loved
it.
This late night, post pub walk gave me the trigger
I had been waiting for to begin a new story.
I had been running ideas around from a story I wrote when I was 19, my
notebook a mess of ideas but couldn’t find a hook.
It was a story of a girl, with the ability to speak
to the dead, being stalked by her past and haunted by an entity that had come
through from the other side many years before, ruining her life. I knew I wanted to set it in the London I
had fallen in love with, but nothing was coming to me. But that night in London Fields, inspiration
found me. I left London the next day
with threads of the story coming together in my head, and a scene where the
lead character is stalked through an empty London park late at night by an
invisible threat.
“We turned and carried on
walking, but this time in silence. And then I heard it again. Feet keeping pace
with us, not far behind, and I felt myself get hot with panic. I turned to look
at Stevie who looked back at me, silently telling me she could hear it too.
Almost angry I spun on my heels to face whoever was following us, but there was
only the empty pathway back towards the Pub on the Park and the houses we could
never afford. And yet I could still hear the slow purposeful footsteps, I spun
wildly looking out onto the grass to see who was approaching but there was no
one, a cold mist had settled in the trees giving the street lights a soft fuzzy glow, gentle beacons creating
circular breaks in the darkness that had carpeted the pathway.”
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