When it comes to
talking about writing her latest book, Gilli Allan starts at the beginning!
The initial concept for Fly
or Fall, (the story I am currently revising and editing for publication
later in the summer) came to me many years ago. At the time I was living in Coulsdon,
a suburban town, south of London,
just inside the M25. We had a nice house and we were near to friends and
family. My son attended a local primary school, my husband was in a good job
and I was a published novelist. My life, as far as I was aware, was hunky dory.
My first novel, Just Before Dawn, was already out in the
world and my second, Desires and Dreams, was in the system. I needed to get on
with my third novel. I began to think about a woman who dislikes change but who
is forced by circumstance to move house from London to an area where she knows no
one. I tentatively started to write the
opening chapters. Then my mother died, and my husband was head-hunted.
Suddenly my life had not only been turned upside down by the
totally unexpected death of my much loved mother, but I was faced with exactly
the same prospect that faced my heroine
The new job was in Gloucestershire, a county neither my husband nor I had
ever even set foot in, let alone had friends in or connections to. But it was an extremely good opportunity. I
had a portable career and a bit of me had always fancied living in the ‘real’
country. In just over two months we’d found a house and actually moved in. Even
though I’d supported our move, I found myself living through some of the
emotions I had only previously imagined for my heroine. I put the book away,
and, though I admit to having tinkered with it over the years, it is only now
that I’ve decided to finish it and get it published.
Eleanor (known as Nell) doesn’t just dislike change, she is naturally
cautious and has always been risk-averse.
She married young when she became pregnant with twins, thwarting her own
educational ambitions. Nell has always lived in the same house in Battersea,
and after she marries and has her twin babies, her life is additionally constrained
by the fact she becomes the carer for her invalid mother. After her mother dies, she and her husband receive
an out-of-the-blue offer for the house which she has now inherited. But she
doesn’t want to move, she has a superstitious sense that it will be the
catalyst for some unimagined disaster. In response to her husband’s impassioned
advocacy, she gives in and they move away from London, away from her friends and her safety
net, to a totally new environment.
Nell finds herself among women who have a totally different
view of life to her own. She finds them materialistic and superficial. The fact
they are married seems no bar to having adventures and revelling in the
fact. The house which Nell and her
husband, Trevor, have moved to needs a lot of refurbishment. One of the men
working for the building firm they engage to do the work, over a two year
period, is infamous as a local Lothario.
So why doesn’t he make a pass at her?
Throughout the drama, the ongoing ‘improvements’ to Nell’s
new house can be viewed as a metaphor. Against the low-key backdrop of the
financial crisis, which culminated in 2008, the story follows the dismantling
of all of Nell’s certainties, her preconceptions and her moral code. Unwelcome
truths about her friends, her children, her husband and herself, are gradually
revealed. Ultimately Fly or Fall is a love story. And by the
end, where I bring the book bang up to date, Nell has rebuilt herself as a
different person, a braver person, and she has embarked on a totally
transformed life.
The book begins in 2006, like this:
Fly or Fall
The cartoon rabbit ran straight off the edge of the cliff. He hung,
apparently oblivious to his predicament, feet pedalling the empty air. There
was a snigger, halfway between laughter and derision, from our twelve year old
twins.
Perhaps belief is
everything, I thought. If you believe you’re still on the same level, that life
hasn’t changed, you won’t see the void which has opened beneath your feet. And
if you don’t see it, you don’t fall. Inevitably the rabbit did stop running,
did look down. I felt with him the nightmare lurch of panic, the sudden plunge
downwards as he dropped out of frame. The result was explosive. As the dust
cleared a precisely incised, rabbit shaped crater was revealed at the foot of
the cliff.
‘I still can’t
believe the amount of money....’ I murmured, with a dazed shake of my head.
‘So? What’s your
problem? Any normal person would be jumping for joy.’ We were speaking quietly;
the twins, had yet to be told their father wanted to move, let alone that
without even putting the house on the market we’d received an eye-watering
offer.
‘I’m not arguing,’
I defended myself half-heartedly. ‘But I suppose I’ve always thought the amount
it might sell for was academic. We have to live somewhere. Your job’s here, our
friends are here, the kids go to school here. Why sell?’
‘We’ve been through
this. There’s nothing to keep us, not really. Why stay in Battersea when we
could live in the country. Clean air, green fields, a house with a driveway and
a garage?’
I hadn’t reacted
the way he’d wanted and expected, and I could hardly explain why to myself let
alone to him. Why did I have such a sense of foreboding? If I agreed to sell
and move out of London,
our lives would change in countless superficial and practical ways but, to use
Trevor’s words, they’d be changes which most normal people would regard as improvements to the style and quality
of life. To him it was a no-brainer. Why stay in a property worth so much money
when we could sell it and move somewhere cheaper in the country. Deflated by my
reaction to his plans he had to work hard to keep his irritation in check.
‘But it’s such an
unremarkable house.’
‘For God’s sake
Nell. Where have you been? You’ve heard about the property boom?’
‘But it’s smaller
than the others in the block, with a much smaller garden. I never in a million
years thought.... Anyway, what about your job?’
He sighed deeply.
‘I’m a teacher, I can get a job anywhere.’
‘Are you sure about
that?’
‘I’m not dragging
us off to the depths of the country on a wing and a prayer. I’ll make sure I’ve
something to go to. I may quit teaching altogether.’
‘But you love
teaching?’
‘I used to,’ he retorted darkly. I felt I
was being drawn into an Alice
in Wonderland world where all my certainties were being turned upside down.
‘Look the whys and wherefores are not important … the important thing is this.
He waved the formal offer at me. His taut, flushed face betrayed his
excitement, as he contemplated a very different future to the one I’d
envisaged.
‘I don’t want … we
don’t need so much money. Wealth can
be very corrupting.’
He sighed again.
‘Of course it seems a lot to us because we’ve been scraping along for years.
It’s only recently things have eased up a bit. But we’ll still need a house to
live in,’ His tabby, greying beard received another vigorous raking. ‘We’ll
only have the balance, to play with.’
‘I know that.’
‘Sure, our lives
are going to change. But we are who we are. It is possible to be comfortably off, to have a few hundred thousand
in an investment account, without abandoning your ideals. Unless you truly
believe our principles are so flaky? The kind you adopt when you’re poor then
slough off like a snake’s skin as soon as your circumstances improve?’
‘No one really
knows how they’ll respond to temptation until they’re exposed to it. It’s a
leap into the dark. Perhaps I am
going to develop a taste for furs and diamonds and love-affairs. And you? Fast
cars and bimbos?’
‘Do try to keep a
sense of proportion. It’s not that kind of dosh.’
‘I am joking.’ But as I said the words I
knew I wasn’t joking, not really. I had cloaked my real misgivings in the
facile.
‘Anyway, how come
you get to have love-affairs and I get the bimbos?’ he added, with a rueful
smile. ‘Sounds a bit discriminatory to me.’
‘What is the male
equivalent to a bimbo? A gigolo? A toy boy? Chance would be a fine thing.’
Much of the
discussion so far had been conducted in this half-joking, half-serious vein. My
insides still bubbled with a mixture of shocked surprise and apprehension,
bordering on hysteria; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For me it was
still too soon to properly and calmly evaluate what all this would really mean
to us. At length he spoke again.
‘You think I don’t
understand, but I do.’ His tone was now conciliatory, bordering on the
condescending. I remained silent, repressing the urge to flash back, ‘Good for
you.’
‘I know all this
has been a shock. I know the last few months since Beryl died, have been hard
on you. Losing your surviving parent has got to change your perspective on life
and the way you live it. Even when that parent had long ceased to be the mother
you knew. We always knew you’d inherit the house. The probate will soon be
sorted and we ... you’ll get the title deeds. What the house is worth is the
only new element for you.’
But not for him?
Had he been comparing house prices for years? Weighing up what my mother’s
death could mean for us? I sensed a ‘But’ coming, possibly an ultimatum. Did he
want to secure my compliance here and now? Yet, as he proceeded, I saw
apprehension in his eyes.
‘Seriously, Nell,
it’s down to you. If you really don’t
want to sell the house and realise some of the profits by moving out and
down-pricing, then I can’t force you.’
I glanced away from
his intent stare, back towards the TV, which now flickered in the corner
without its cynical audience of two. Since I’d last looked Bugs Bunny had not
only survived his fall but had triumphed over his pursuers, in the interim
mysteriously achieving a lifestyle of wealth and opulence. As the title music
swelled the final frame revealed him lying back complacently against a pile of
harem cushions, a jewelled turban balanced between his ears, the inevitable
carrot held pinched in his fingers like a cigar.
‘Beats me why you
can’t just accept it and rejoice? Trevor persisted doggedly. ‘Our ship’s come.
It’s our turn.’
He made my
misgivings seem increasingly nebulous and perverse. How could I continue to
resist? One moment I’d felt like I was at the edge of a precipice, facing a
leap into the unknown, yet still clinging to the possibility of retreat. Now I
realised the world had shifted on its axis; there could be no going back. The
secure ground had vanished from beneath my feet. I had only two options left ̶ to fall or to fly.
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