A Desirable Residence

A Desirable Residence is the second book I ever wrote. I’ve always been quite obsessed with property and in A Desirable Residence the house is almost the main character. The story is of three families all linked by the house – there’s the family moving out, the family moving in, and the estate agent who did the deal. They all become entangled with each other and it all becomes quite complicated. I wrote it a long time ago but the funny thing is it feels quite true to life.

I opened it the other day and read the first scene, which is about a woman who has been trying to sell her house for ten months. The estate agent has told her that in order to sell it she’s got to put in a new shower and drop the price and this freaks her out. She gets in a total rage and starts yelling at him. And I thought to myself, oh my goodness, I wrote that scene years ago but it feels very, very real – plus ça change!

The Wedding Girl

The Wedding Girl was the fifth book I wrote and it was tremendous fun to write. It’s about a very dizzy girl called Millie who got married in her teens to help out a friend, then sort of forgot about it. She never bothered to get a divorce and is in denial about the whole thing, which would be fine except she’s actually getting married for real in a massive prestigious wedding and suddenly her secret from the past comes out. Of course once one secret comes out, a whole load of other secrets come out… It’s a bit like dominoes!  So, it’s quite a tangled up plot, it’s got a great big ticking clock and a silly heroine who’s got herself in a big pickle. It’s also set in Bath which is such a beautiful city, it was sheer pleasure to imagine my characters there.

The Gatecrasher

This book features one of my favourite heroines, Fleur Daxeny. It’s called The Gatecrasher because Fleur gatecrashes funerals and memorial services. She dresses up in black, finds services of wealthy families then goes along and infiltrates herself into the family and ultimately fleeces them.  Not very much, just enough to keep herself going. So she’s not a good person – she’s beautiful and unscrupulous and she’s a user – but she’s also very warm and very witty and very life-enhancing, and you find yourself rooting for her even though you know you shouldn’t.

Fleur becomes entangled with one particular family and faces the biggest decision – does she hang up her collection of black hats and find love and settle down, or does she fleece them as usual and move on? The reaction I’ve always had from readers is that they didn’t want to like Fleur – they felt morally shocked by what she did – but by the end they kind of loved her. She’s perhaps my ultimate flawed heroine.

Cocktails for Three

“Three girls meet every month for cocktails, and this book follows their stories. Candice has an old school friend come back into her life, without quite realising what that old school friend’s agenda really is… Maggie is struggling as a new mother… Roxanne has man problems of her own. As the story progresses, their lives become more and more mixed up, coming to a head in quite a dramatic way.

Ultimately this is a book about friendship because throughout all the intrigue and suspense of the individual stories, it’s their strong friendship that keeps them all going and actually solves their problems in the end. I think that for women, friendship is really important and sustaining. If you’ve got a couple of friends and a couple of cocktails then however bad things are, you know you’re going to cheer up…”

The Tennis Party / 40 Love

The Tennis Party (40 Love in the US) was the first book I ever wrote. I was 24 and working as a financial journalist. I was commuting to work on the train and reading loads of paperbacks and one day I just thought to myself, ‘I want to have a go at this, I want to write a book.’  I thought and thought and tried to come up with an idea. And the idea I eventually had was a tennis party – a group of friends who come together at a country house for a weekend to play tennis – at least ostensibly to play tennis. In fact their host has an ulterior motive: he wants to extort money out of them. They all have a lot of baggage, they sleep with each other, they behave very badly, drink a lot of Pimms, thrash tennis balls around, and things come to a head quite intensely.

I can still remember the thrill of it – first of all, just getting to the end of writing it and thinking ‘I’ve written a book!’ Then, to get it published was an absolute dream come true. I can remember walking into bookshops and seeing my book up on the shelves and just staring in amazed delight. (I have no idea what the shop assistants thought of me!) I will always remember that buzz, so for me this is a very special book.

Six Geese a-Laying

Six Geese A-Laying is a mini short story which I wrote in 2011. It’s a Christmas short story with a twist and is free to download to your e-reader (or you can read the story in full here on my website)!