‘Oh, Dot.’ said her mother.
‘It’s OK, Mum,’ Dot replied.
The woman was smiling when Dot got off the phone. ‘They’ve called my coach,’ she said, getting up. ‘You know, it’ll be OK.’
Dot looked at her. ‘What will?’
‘They want us to think that the world is bad, the people who did this. But it isn’t, you know. Most people are kind and most things are wonderful.’ She touched Dot’s hand as she spoke and her fingers were icy cold. ‘Keep calm. You’ll be home soon.’
The woman disappeared into the crowd and only after she’d gone did Dot wish she’d asked her how she knew any of that to be true – how anyone could know that? –and whether or not life was wonderful or if that lady had simply had a wonderful life. Ultimately, it had been nothing more than a small act of kindness, one person’s attempt to make her feel better. And yet it had worked. Sometimes small acts were all you needed.
The first two coaches to Cardiff were filled up before Dot could get on, so it wasn’t until midnight that she was able to take a seat on the vehicle that would transport her home. She’d spoken to her mother five times by then and Mavis once. Mavis told her that her own mother had gone to sit with Alice while they were waiting for news. That she had come home and wept on her father’s shoulder and he’d held on to her as though he’d meant it. ‘There’s so much I have to tell you, Dot,’ she’d said, ‘so much we didn’t know.’ And Dot had laughed at that and said, ‘No shit, Mave.’
Dot sat in her seat and let the heating warm her tired toes, shutting her eyes against the brutality of the day. Her head felt unbearably heavy on her neck, and as her eyes relaxed against the lights on the motorway her body took her down while her mind pulled her back up. She occupied that moment between sleeping and waking more than any metaphysical poet on that journey and in those moments she forgot who she was. The wheels on the coach turned, propelling them over the concrete beneath their feet, each revolution taking them further away from the chaos and closer to home. You couldn’t worry for all those left behind that night, you could only be thankful that you were saved, that you had a chance to start again.
Dot woke to the light of dawn, which she saw out of the window of the coach as it rushed along the motorway. Up ahead the hugeness of the Severn Bridge loomed like a child’s drawing. The traffic pulled them along, on to the heavy metal structure held together by gigantic bolts and titanic feats of engineering. The houses on the hillsides were like white building blocks, a few miles distancing them from the English ones they’d passed only minutes before. The towns beckoned and receded, held together by a seam of industry which spewed smoke, but today made Dot feel as though she was coming home.
Everything still seemed unreal; even the fact that she had been in London was beginning to fade. Eventually the coach took the turning to Cardiff and she saw the fields and open spaces turn into the greys of buildings and factories. Traffic lights now slowed their progress and her skin itched with the anticipation of arrival. The clock read 6:24 a.m. as they pulled into the coach station.
Dot’s mother and grandmother stood on the sand-coloured concourse waiting for her, along with all the other families having loved ones returned to them on this new day. She stepped off the coach and felt herself running before she could check herself, rushing into the arms of the two people she could have stayed at home to see. And as she stood there Dot knew that she would forget so much about the previous day, so many memories would become blurred with half-truths and things she heard, but that she must not forget this moment. She felt as if she had been on a strange circular dance, turning in ever-decreasing circles, spinning like a top with no resolution. But in the moment of seeing her odd little family, of being held by them and holding on to them, she stopped. She knew she might forget the kind woman and even the frightened faces, but that she would remember this. There was a way to stand still. And anyway, Dot thought from the midst of her strange triangular hug, aren’t we all just guessing? It could even be true to say that when her father left he probably wasn’t entirely sure he was doing the right thing.
‘Anthony George Marks,’ her mother said finally. ‘Your dad’s name is Tony. He left on your second birthday and I haven’t heard from him since. But he was here. He was here and he loved you very much.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mum,’ said Dot. ‘Really, it doesn’t matter any more.’
‘Come on,’ said her grandmother. ‘Let’s get you home.’
The drive back was uneventful. Dot felt her tiredness deep in her limbs and she couldn’t do much more than doze in the back. No one spoke and they left the radio silent but the silence was beautiful. By the time they pulled up in front of their home it was bright and warm, the day promising perfect summer conditions, because of course that particular wheel simply turned, unaware of the tragedies which befell those brave enough to live.
Dot’s mother unlocked their front door and they crossed the threshold, stepping over a bulging letter which had been pushed through their letterbox only a few hours earlier, at exactly the same time as Alice and Clarice had arrived in Cardiff to pick up Dot. None of them would ever know about that particular coincidence and none of them even noticed the letter at that moment, so eager were they to bathe and feed and enclose Dot. But they would notice it in the coming hours. They would open it and read it. They would cry over it and Dot would want to burn it. But, in the second small act of kindness shown to Dot in less than twenty-four hours, Alice would stop her. With her mother standing behind her Alice would tell her daughter to ring the number. She would tell her that we are all capable of mistakes, but that the important thing to remember is that we are all also just as capable of forgiveness.
‘It is only when you stop forgiving that you stop living,’ Alice said as Dot wiped away her tears. She looked out of the window at the new day and realised that, as she said the words, so they became true.
Acknowledgements
Firstly, massive thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, who are consistently patient and helpful and bursting with amazing ideas. Especially my editor, Lousia Joyner, who is insightful and kind and a complete pleasure to work with. Thanks also to Carol MacArthur who is always on the other end of the phone and knows the answers to everything I ask.
Also, as ever, thanks to the people who have to put up with me on a daily basis, my husband Jamie and our children Oscar, Violet and Edith. (Feel free to read it now, Jamie!)
This book has been rattling around in my head for a long time and, as a result, a few people have read it in various incarnations over the years. I have received lots of encouragement and advice from many people, but most especially my friends Polly, Amy, Craig and Richard, my sisters Posy and Ernestina and my mother, Lindy.
The biggest champion of this book has however been my father, David, who has read Dot in every version, not just with encouragement, but also with constructive advice. Which is not a surprise, as he is the reason why I love reading and writing as much as I do. I was lucky enough to grow up in a house filled with books, with a father who guided my reading and was never too busy to talk to me about it. If I have learnt anything from my parents it is that the things that matter in life are not what we would expect and certainly not material, which is a lesson I hope to pass on to my own children.
So, whilst Dot’s parents are somewhat absent, mine have been ever present, something for which I am truly grateful.
A Q&A with Araminta Hall
What inspired you to write Dot?
No one thing inspired me, I have just always been very interested in our relationships with our families and how myths and mistakes can seep through generations. I wanted to explore how we are often most secretive with the people we are closest to and how small actions can have huge consequences that reverberate down the generations. I’m also very intrigued by the idea of story-telling itself and, for me, Dot is as much a story about stories as anything else. All of our history, both public and personal, is only a suc
cession of stories and each time they are told the person telling them brings their own experience to bear. So, as such, nothing that we know can ever be called completely real. I wanted to write about people trapped in their own stories but unable to tell their way out of them, not even really aware that they are trapped. The events of the book, however, evolved. I completely re-wrote this novel four times over ten years, writing another novel in between and sometimes not going back to it for years at a time. As a result the finished book is very different from anything which could have inspired me in the beginning.
You mention in your Acknowledgements that Dot is a book which ‘has been rattling around in my head for a long time’. Can you expand a little on this and on your own creative process?
Yes, this book has had a very long gestation. I’ve always wanted to be a novelist, since I was a little girl and Dot has in some ways been my first real attempt at a book. I’m not sure that I will ever write another book in the same way that I wrote Dot. Certainly my first published novel, Everything and Nothing, was a very different process and the one I am working on now is following a more straight-forward pattern. As a rule however, writing for me is always based in character. I like to know my characters inside out and often they do things I am not expecting, which sounds bizarre, but is true. As yet I have never planned the events of a novel, but find that they evolve because that is how my characters would behave. Which is not to say that plot is not fundamental to a good book. I am very aware that you cannot just write about people and relationships, but that you need to ground it within a believable and good story. I am a great believer in sitting down and writing and not caring about how good I think it is as I know I will change it so many times. I re-wrote Dot so many times simply because I knew it wasn’t working as a story and of course with every re-writing your characters and plot get tighter and hopefully your writing gets better. In a nutshell my creative process involves copious reading and writing and re-writing.
Much of the book focuses on different female relationships, often as a source of conflict but also great intimacy and protection. How important would you say the role of female relationships is throughout a woman’s life?
For me women are absolutely integral to my happiness and wellbeing. I am lucky to be married to a lovely man and have a fantastic son, but without the women in my life I would flounder. From your mother to your sisters to your daughters to your friends, women support each other. It is women who I turn to when I have a problem or feel low because women are so great at honesty. There is a chapter in Dot when Alice meets Sandra and feels enclosed by their friendship, which is what women do for each other. We break down society’s myths and reassure each other that we are not alone, that what we are feeling is normal. Because women still operate primarily in the domestic arena and that is a solitary and lonely place. My best advice to any of my friends who get pregnant is always to find themselves a network of women as quickly as possible.
Would you say these relationships change and evolve over a woman’s life, especially after having children?
Absolutely. The first relationship that changes is the one with your mother as you suddenly need her help in a way you haven’t done since you were a child. You also of course see her differently, suddenly understanding the reasons why she said and did the things that annoyed you in your own childhood. Then of course you develop relationships with other women who are sleep deprived and feeling like they’re going mad, you drink tea and laugh at the fact that you haven’t even brushed your teeth in a week and everyone feels better. My children are all at school now, but I still have a network of friends who I don’t need to explain anything to and we still help and support each other constantly. And then of course life comes full circle. I have just watched my mother help my grandmother through the last years of her life, where the roles were reversed and it was often like watching my mother deal with another child. I think women are always like the central pin in the wheel, with an eye on all the moving parts and only other women really understand this.
Are any of the characters and relationships in Dot based on people you know or knew?
Clarice is very like my grandmother. All Clarice’s strange beliefs are hers and the not being allowed to sit many of the chairs round the dining room table comes straight from her house. Like Clarice though my grandmother was very intuitive and caring if you got beyond her hard exterior. She was worth listening to, something I only realised quite late in her life. The other characters however are totally made up and nothing like anyone I know.
Much of the novel is centred on Dot’s search for her father, with Chapter 20 being wholly comprised of letters from him to Dot. How important, would you say, is the presence of a strong parental figure in one’s life and to what extent does it impact a child’s identity?
I think it is totally essential to know where you come from. Which is a different thing from saying that we all need to be part of a nuclear family. We live in a modern world in which the idea of family has blurred and evolved. Dot’s problem is not that her father is absent, but that she has no idea who he is, or if he even existed. I know families of every shape and size, with almost every permutation of relevant adults as you can imagine and what makes their children secure is a knowledge of where they came from and that they were wanted. On the cusp of adulthood Dot needs this information before she can move on with her life.
Are there any authors who influenced Dot, or who have influenced your work in general?
I don’t know whether any writers have influenced my work, although I think it is sometimes hard not to find your writing marked by a very good book. It is probably however no coincidence that my favourite writers are ones who deal with families and our relationship to the world, like Anne Tyler, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, John Irving and Charlotte Brontë (to name but a few!).
On p. 26, Alice concludes that her mother Clarice ‘saw the world as a place of threat and violence and manners and rules. It was obvious now to Alice that she had simply never been in love.’ Is love presented as a source of liberation in this book?
I wish I could answer yes to that and I wish life was that simple; that love can save us. Of course love can do this, but no emotion is one-dimensional and the flip side of love is fear, paranoia and heartbreak. I sometimes think that loving someone is one of the bravest things we do as humans. When I had my first child fourteen years ago I felt proper fear for the first time and spent the first two years of his life in a pretty constant state of anxiety. We love in so many different ways, as children, parents, partners and friends and each brings its own perils and joys. A life without love would be miserable and I think that many of the characters in this book are unhappy because they are holding back what they feel for each other. I’m not trying to say that learning how to love will bring them unbridled happiness, but it seems like a good place to start. Learning to let go in love is an important lesson that we all need to learn at some point. We are not in control of either who we love or who loves us and this is why loving is so often an act of bravery. Perhaps it is fair to say that expressing their love for each other brings the characters in Dot a sense of self-liberation, which might make their lives that bit easier.
To what extent do Clarice and Alice’s differences reflect the changing attitudes and expectations of women? Is Clarice a product of her generation, more than anything else?
I’m not sure that Clarice and Alice are that different actually. Of course the way they interact with the world is skewed by the times they live in, but in fact I think they have a similar attitude to life, if only they would speak to each other and break out of their own head spaces. Clarice is certainly a product of a generation who believed in manners and rules, but I think Alice is wrong to think that she has never been in love or that she fails to love now. Dot is as much a product of her generation as Clarice is and in fact, all three women are more a product of their experiences than anything else. All three of them have been abandoned in one way or anot
her; Clarice by her mother and Howie, Alice by Tony and Dot by her father. They share this fundamental marker and yet none of them have ever spoken to each other about it; they are very similar characters, how they deal with it is, however, influenced by the times they occupy.
What would you like the reader to take away from this novel?
Whatever they want. For me that is absolutely the joy of reading, occupying a world that is your own for the time it takes to be there. It is very rare that you ever talk about a book with someone and find yourself in complete agreement (something which book groups across the land could no doubt testify to). I have spoken to strangers about my first book and heard them say things which I had not consciously meant anyone to take from my writing, but which I realise is there. I hope that people find Dot uplifting, but really as long as people enjoy reading it, I am happy for them to take from it what they will.
Do you have a favourite book?
I have been asked that question a lot since my first novel was published and of course the answer is no as there are so many books which I have loved. When pressed to pick one I do however find myself answering A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. For me this is a pretty perfect book filled with pathos and love, families, struggles and meaning. It is one of the few books I have re-read more than twice and each time it leaves me breathless.
Many writers say that finding a particular place to write a novel is essential to their writing routine and helps with creativity. Do you have any personal habits that help you when you’re writing?
No, I have three children and a husband who commutes so I handle the majority of our domestic life. Our youngest started school last year which has made life a bit easier, but I think creative routines and places are the luxury of male writers! I write whenever and wherever, my only constant being a cup of tea. I’m not very good at leaving mess and so I tend to drop the kids at school, walk the dog, rush round the house and then hopefully sit down for an hour or two before the kids need picking up. Although, realistically I’m lucky to do that more than three days a week. Maybe in ten years I’ll only be able to write when wearing a yellow jumper drinking my tea out of a special mug, but for now I can’t afford to be picky or I’d write about two words a week.
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