THE POWER OF THREE

In her new novel, Jessie Burton explores the tangled lives of a trio of women

Jessie Burton on chronicling the lives of a trio of women in her new novel

Afew years ago, I was sitting in a stylish London café – you know the type: airy, Scandinavian design, everyone isolated yet sitting close together. I was recently single and my outlook on life had changed: I felt I could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone. My twenties were far behind me and I wasn’t a girl anymore; I was financially independent, and change was in the air.

To my right was a woman of about my age in a beautiful paisley dress, typing away at her keyboard. She was alone, and happily so; more invested in whatever world she was dreaming up inside her laptop than the one around her. In the corner, a pair of women slightly older than me sat together at their own table. They were clearly friends, and the energy between them was easy and familiar. Only one thing seemed to differentiate them from each other: on the lap of one sat a baby, probably about six months old. The woman carrying him clasped her hands round his tiny ribs with ease, but there was exhaustion in her slight slouch, in the way she pushed her hair behind her ear. Her body, having given life to his, was not quite as comfortable as that of her friend, who leant forward, talking animatedly, her hands free against the air.

Something strange happened in the café that day. It was as if those three women symbolised everything that was wonderful about the choices we have, and everything we stand to lose by having to make a choice in the first place. I could see the various paths ahead of me laid out – motherhood, work, creativity, friendship – and not only did I not know where any of them would lead, I wasn’t even sure whether they would all be possible. The women were strangers, and yet they weren’t. I sensed a sort of symbiosis between them, my own female friends and me.

The mid to late thirties are a strange time. My friends have had babies, or failed to have them. They’ve moved country, fallen in love, got divorced, lost parents, changed careers. Life has begun to feel more ours and at the same time, in the age of social media, more fragmented and full of unrealised potential. The sense of arrival we’ve

been expecting hasn’t come. When I saw that triangle of women in the café, I knew I wanted to write about them, to imagine their desires and fears. That idea became my new novel, The Confession.

The book has two settings: 1980s Los Angeles and contemporary London, the latter featuring several scenes in cafés just like that one. Hollywood gave me a space to play with ideas of performance, glamour, power and danger, while London in the 2010s was a world I knew well. At the heart of the book are three women who are flawed, who have messed up, who don’t win everything, but still pick up life’s prizes along the way. Rose is a sort of everywoman, adrift in London, desperate for change but uncertain how to enact it, on the hunt for her missing mother, who she believes will give her the answers she has needed for so long. In LA, Elise is one of the world’s urchins, needy but defensive, dreaming up perfect futures and running from them when they don’t go according to plan. Connecting them both across the decades is the majestic Connie Holden, a writer who is in her late thirties when the novel begins and 73 by the time it ends. She is the only one of the characters who understands that if you want to have it all, you must live in a fantasy world – and who can do that for ever?

I have dedicated the novel to my female friends, because I am proud of them all for who they have become, but I have also written it for all women, my small offering to show that none of us are alone. We all have desires to be free, to change the story, to run away, to want more than one go at life. But it’s not always possible, and that’s OK. It’s what you do with the story you have that counts.

‘The Confession’ by Jessie Burton (£16.99, Picador) is published on 19 September.