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The memory of my teenage years, spent in a small town in Lancashire, where coal was mined and cotton spun, help me write about the grimy landscape of the industrial North of England where much of the country's wealth was generated. The slag heaps, the colliery winding gear and the dense back fogs of winter no longer exist; they have been banished in our search for cleaner air and a greener environment.
Like many women who choose to have a family and move house frequently I did not have a glittering career. I took whatever work I could find. As a result I met a great many people from different walks of life in different parts of the country. Their voices live in my memory, and will occasionally pop into print in the mouths of my characters. When I eventually got my first novel, Thornfield Hall, published I was thrilled to be told I was particularly good at writing about the servants.
Thornfield Hall is an alternative view of Jane Eyre. My research into Charlotte Bronte showed me how women began to come out of the background at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. No longer content to be wives and mothers, they wanted an active role in the business of life.
In His Wife's Sister (first published as A Family Affair) the girls of the Truesdale and the Woodward families all have the advantage of loving and stable homes, yet their careers take very different paths. In the background simmers a love affair, forbidden by the law of the time. Its discovery would cause scandal and public disgrace.
In the The Law's Delay you can follow the lives of the Truesdale and Woodward families as once again they negotiate a way through the confines of the law and the opinions of others, much as couples do today. While they had telegrams; we have the mobile phone. A hundred years may have passed but human nature has not changed so much.
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