About the author… Beth Morrey

She is a TV producer but has been trying to write a novel since her 20s. She lives in London and this is her first book.

This novel was inspired by… ”I was on maternity leave when I wrote it, which can be a lonely time, so I was musing on loneliness generally. Before I left work, I’d been developing a TV show called 100-Year-Old Drivers, and I’d been thinking about how it challenges our perception of the elderly. And I was walking my labradoodle a lot, bumping into locals and realising that owning a dog pulls you into the path of lots of people.” The most challenging thing about writing it was… “Writing it felt easy – the biggest treat I’ve ever given myself, to sit in a café two days a week and empty out my brain.

But when I’d finished the draft, I had to go back and look at it all over again, and that was where the hard work started. Deciding which bits had to go, which bits could be better, worrying it was rubbish, losing confidence and building myself up again.” My writing habits are… ”I go for a run or walk the dog, to think and plan, then head to my favourite café and write for around four hours. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it’s a slog, but I usually produce something. At 2pm I go home, look over what I’ve done, and work out what else needs doing. When I put my sons to bed, they like me to sit in their room while they go to sleep, so occasionally I write more then, drinking wine in the dark. That tends to produce a different kind of prose style!”