The Year of the Rat (25 page)

It’s her birthday.

I hear the sigh of her breath, in and out, between her slightly parted lips, watch her chest rise and fall, rise and fall.

‘Rose,’ I whisper.

I walk downstairs and out into the garden. The sun is so bright that when I shut my eyes I can still see the shadow patterns of the trees against my lids.

On the other side of the wall I can hear the children who have moved into Dulcie’s house playing, jumping on their trampoline and laughing.

Above are the birds and the constant drone of the planes.

Behind me is my home.

In the soil at my feet there are green shoots; pale petals ready to unfurl.

The world may tip at any moment. But for now—

For now the world keeps turning and I keep breathing, in and out, in and out. I breathe in the life that is all around me, in this garden, in this city, in the fields beyond it, in the seas
beyond them and the shores on the other side; life that reaches out towards the unreachable, unknowable space that is beyond all of us and the stars that burn there.

The world may tip at any moment.

But for now that doesn’t matter.

Huge love and thanks to my mum and dad, Helen and Brian Furniss. Without your support – emotional, practical, financial and editorial – I couldn’t possibly
have written this book. Also to David, for your blind faith that I would write a book worth reading, and for the sacrifices you made so that I could try.

Thank you to Julia Green and Steve Voake for your gentle guidance, and to my fellow students on the Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People: Blondie Camps, Alex Hart, Helen
Herdman, Lu Hersey, David Hofmeyr and Sasha Busbridge. You all helped to make this book what it is.

Thank you to Linda Newbery, Malorie Blackman and Melvin Burgess. Your belief in my writing kept me going when I felt like giving up.

Thanks to the team at Simon and Schuster and Riot for your enthusiasm and hard work, especially to Ingrid Selberg, Jane Griffiths, Elisa Offord, Kat McKenna, Laura Hough, Maura
Brickell and Preena Gadher.

And finally, thanks to my agent, Catherine Clarke, for always being right about everything.

What was the inspiration behind THE YEAR OF THE RAT?

I was pregnant when I started writing the story and already had two children, although my two were still very young, not teenagers like Pearl. I remember people being surprised
that I was writing about a woman dying in childbirth at this time, but I think writing is often a way of exploring fears or preoccupations, of externalising them and working them through.

There was also a very specific incident that became the starting point for the book. The previous summer I’d had to go into hospital for an operation. The night before I baked a cake and
the thought popped into my head of what would happen to the cake if I died during the operation (I’m a terrible pessimist – I think, like many writers, I find it very easy to imagine
terrible things happening!). Would they eat it? Would it get thrown away? This thought obviously lurked in the back of my mind and appeared unexpectedly when I started writing
The Year of The
Rat
. This very small detail became a scene that was then a powerful trigger for the rest of the book; it told me so much about the relationship between Pearl and her dad, and gave me a very
tangible sense of the huge loss they were both feeling.

There are several very strong female characters in THE YEAR OF THE RAT and in many ways it’s their different experiences and outlook on life that define the
novel. Did you intentionally set out to write a book with female relationships at its centre?

It wasn’t a conscious aim in the sense of having an agenda, but the mother-daughter relationship felt like a very natural subject to write about, as a daughter and a
mother myself. The complexities of relationships within families fascinate me and all the women in my family are strong personalities in their different ways!

Dulcie is an important figure too, even though she plays a cameo role in the story. I was close to my own grandmothers growing up and I wanted to explore how we look at old people and the
assumptions we make about them. A big part of growing up is the realisation that your parents and grandparents had lives before you were born, that they were young and very different from the
version of them that you know, and that you may have more in common than you think. This plays out in the relationship between Pearl and Dulcie.

But it’s not just the women who are strong in this story. Alex, Pearl’s Dad, is the hero of the book in many ways. He’s under pressure and he doesn’t deal with everything
perfectly. He makes mistakes, but he’s Pearl’s rock.

Part of the strength of the female characters is the dynamics between them, and especially the different roles of mothers and daughters. Do you think being a mother
has changed your outlook on life? Do you relate most to Pearl or Stella?

Being a mother has definitely changed my outlook, and I think this book comes entirely as a result of that. The strength of what you feel for your children is something I
couldn’t imagine before having them. Suddenly someone other than yourself is the centre of the world, and that’s both liberating and terrifying, because there’s a loss of control
that comes with that and a huge responsibility. Abandoning your child and causing them pain is the worst thing you can imagine doing, and that’s part of what I’m exploring in the book
too, because that’s exactly what Stella does, albeit completely unintentionally.

I think Stella is my alter ego! She walked onto the page and took over her scenes while I took a back seat, letting her get on with it. If I’m honest I think she probably has an
exaggerated version of both my best and worst characteristics. But writing her really felt like taking dictation. Sometimes I’d laugh out loud at things she said and my husband would say,
“You do realise you’re laughing at your own jokes?”, and I’d say, “It wasn’t me making the joke, it was Stella.” Needless to say, he thought I was
crazy.

Having said that, I relate to Pearl very strongly too, and of course while I was writing the book I saw things from Pearl’s point of view, since I was writing in the first person. I
remember vividly how it felt to be a teenager, so it didn’t feel difficult to see the world through her eyes. I didn’t have to deal with the things that Pearl does, but I remember
clearly the feeling of being lost and a bit out of my depth and determined not to show it. Pearl’s hostility and the distance she creates between herself and those around her is a defence
mechanism. And although I didn’t lose my mother, I did experience the loss of a friend when I was a little older than Pearl. I think the first time someone very close to you dies,
particularly if it’s unexpected and they are young, you don’t just suffer the loss of that individual but it shakes your entire world, your sense of what life is about and what the
point of everything is. That was part of what I wanted to explore in the book.

THE YEAR OF THE RAT is about Pearl’s journey after her mother’s death. Did you do much research into the processes of grief before you started
writing?

I did do some reading around the psychology of grief and the five stages of grieving, and this was useful and thought-provoking as background. But at the same time I knew it was
important not to get too bogged down in the theory. The truth is that grief isn’t a series of boxes to be ticked, it is incredibly personal, and everyone will both experience and express it
differently.

In the course of writing the book I read and listened to first-hand accounts of young people who had suffered the loss of a parent, and again and again what came across incredibly strongly was
that each person reacts in a different way. Some people seem OK on the surface and bottle up their emotions. Some are angry. Some people are brought together by grief, others are isolated by their
inability to grieve together or by their different ways of dealing with their loss. For some it is a trigger for other serious problems: depression, anorexia, self-harm. I had to allow myself to be
led by my character and believe that, if I knew my character well enough, her responses to particular situations would be true and right and believable for her. I had a very clear sense from the
start of how grief would freeze her, how all her sorrow and fear and anger would feel so overwhelming that she would keep them locked inside her, and cut her off from the rest of the world.

While I was writing the book I also came across newspaper articles and interviews and features on the sudden loss of a loved one. The thing that came through again and again was how long it took
to accept that the person was really dead; that they were gone and wouldn’t be coming back. People referred to the fact that the first anniversary of a death was incredibly hard for them and
that it was only really at this point that they really accepted the person was gone. This shaped the way I approached the ending of the book. It was important for me that Pearl isn’t
‘OK’ by the end of the book, that she isn’t happy and ready to move on. In many ways she is still at the start of the grieving process. She has simply accepted that her mum is
gone.

The make-up of Pearl’s family is an unconventional one. Was it important to you to reflect the fact that children and teenagers aren’t necessarily living
in a traditional nuclear family?

Yes. For the book to be believable it was important for the story to reflect the real world, where families come in all shapes and sizes. Also, one of the things that’s
really important in this story is Pearl’s realisation that people and their relationships are more complicated than they might appear, and that life throws unexpected things at you. I wanted
to show that this isn’t always a bad thing; positive things can come out of the untidiness and unpredictability of life too. Stella wished that Alex, Pearl’s stepdad, was her biological
father; she wanted to make everything neat and perfect for Pearl. But Alex’s love for Pearl is what makes him her ‘real’ dad; no one could love her more than he does. And in fact
Pearl gains something by discovering her biological father and his family and making a connection with them.

How did you become a full-time writer?

I loved creative writing at school but it never occurred to me that I could do it for a living. When my children were very young and I was at home with them I had a really
strong desire to write again but I didn’t know where to start. I had very little time, and when I did occasionally manage to sit down at my computer I’d sit and stare at the blank
screen, filled with horror, wondering what on earth to do next. In the end I plucked up the courage to go on a week-long residential writing course with the Arvon foundation. It was wonderful, and
while I was there I forced myself to start writing – in fact I wrote the opening of
The Year of The Rat
while I was there. I got some really encouraging feedback and began to take
the idea of writing a bit more seriously. When my children were old enough I applied to do a part-time MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. I went back to
The Year of The
Rat
for my MA manuscript and after an awful lot of hard work, sleepless nights, blood, sweat and many tears, I got it finished and sent it off to Catherine Clarke, who is now my agent. To my
surprise and delight she loved it, and within a month I had a book deal.

What books or writers have most inspired you?

There are so many that I hardly know where to start! Every good book I read inspires me to try to write better. In terms of writing this particular book I would say that Meg
Rosoff’s
How I Live Now
was a big inspiration. It’s a book with a teenage protagonist that speaks to readers of any age because it doesn’t limit itself. It deals with big
issues, it’s funny and moving and clever, it has the most wonderful voice and it’s beautifully written. I read it before I had any serious thought of becoming a writer and it genuinely
made me think I’d love to give it a go. I also re-read Jane Gardam’s
Bilgewater
and
Crusoe’s Daughter
for inspiration when I got stuck with the book. Both are
books I have loved for many years, and have wonderful quirky teenage protagonists, as does Dodie Smith’s
I Capture the Castle
, another old favourite that I went back to for
inspiration. While I was writing this book I was also reading Hilary Mantel’s
Wolf Hall
and
Bring Up the Bodies.
They are extraordinary books, and reading her makes me want
to write every single sentence perfectly. Of course I don’t manage it, but she inspires me to keep trying!

What are you working on next?

My next book is a very different story but again focuses on family relationships, love and loss. This one will have a bit more of a mystery to it though and, I hope, a love
story. I think it’s also going to have an element of historical drama as well as a very contemporary storyline, which is something new and exciting for me. I can’t say too much though,
because it’s at an early stage and although I can see it clearly out of the corner of my eye if I look at it too hard it disappears. But I’m very excited to be working on a brand new
project and getting to know my characters – there are some very interesting personalities in the mix! Expect fireworks, a few giggles and possibly a tear or two . . .