by Jo Gatford
Memories closest to the surface are the first to go – I grasp at the vague image of a box of clattering pills before it flashes out of existence – along with the logic of why the inside of my head has been replaced with pillow. My pulse judders, frightened of its own beat, and my mouth is dry and yet flooding with saliva until my drool adds to the pool around me. Though I know I should be cold there is heat in my hands and my throat and behind my ears, and I know the lights I see aren’t the same as the one we are told to follow to salvation, or perhaps they are and there’s a final choice. Maybe existence is just pot luck.
Pinwheels of streaking white light linger in between raindrops as one of Alice’s devils roars a claiming circle around me. I fall into pieces but the ground is soft and smells of windy autumn days. Damp grass and bonfires.
There was no collision. Even the cushioned shunt into the undergrowth was an afterthought to the anticlimactic bump against the curb. Our necks were not impressed, but the worst physical occurrence was the stalling of the car.
Clare breathes with a careful precision, her arms folded over her stomach - a calmness at terrible odds with her terrified eyes. I count the rectangles of coloured light in her irises, trapped in the thick moment before everything comes rushing back to speed.
Time lets go of us and we collapse the few inches back into our seats.
There was a man. We both remember. She lets out a choke and forgets what to do with her hands – simultaneously trying to cover her mouth and make an exclaiming gesture – slapping herself in the face by mistake.
I could laugh but I’m already falling out of the open door and receiving my own slapping from the frozen rain. The light from the headlamps disguises the depth of the water on the tarmac surface and I find myself wading rather than running towards the crumpled shape ahead of me.
I know we didn’t hit him. But he’s not moving and it’s my fault. And before I even reach the sodden curled up pile of rags, I know what I am about to see. I curse him with words he has never heard me dare to say, apologising and swearing and by the time I get there I am empty. There’s a square of solidified bone where my heart used to be and it hurts like nothing I’ve ever fucking imagined, like what Alex’s death should have felt like, more than a zombie bite, more than anything.
I see the silhouette of Matthew’s face. His ears stick out against the white cloud above him. And though his features are not mine, the years have moulded his expressions into a parody of my own; his frown, his confusion, his sorrow. He looks down on me and my eyes adjust to the light and I realise he is not frowning but in pain, trying to memorise my face.
Just as suddenly, Alex’s face emerges from somewhere in between us, and though he smiles, I can see just how little he looks like me.
Still. You are my boys. Mine. You belonged to me.
I will keep talking to Gloria and hope you find your way to her one day.
I knelt in the wet road and watched my father’s back judder up and down as he tried to breathe. I didn’t know it until we reached the hospital – after they removed a creamy globule of papier mâché from his throat – that he’d been choking. The doctor rolled the ball over a few times with the end of his pen.
“Do you know what this is? What he’d been eating?”
“Pills,” Angela said.
“Oh my God,” Clare said.
“Letters,” I said.
Angela had joined me in the road, under the ceaseless, uncaring rain. She stopped the same exact distance away from Dad, as if there were a glass box around his body. She leaned against my shoulder and clenched her teeth and pushed her nails into her knees.
Dad’s hand was on his stomach when I turned him over. And on his face: a contented look, as if he had died savouring something delicious.
To my husband - thank you for never doubting, always believing, and forever improving my work (and life) with honesty and love. You’re the spark that keeps my writing alight and a thousand more cheesy metaphors... And to my babies - you may not sleep, but you make up for it with pure joy. Although it would be nice to be slightly less sleep-deprived for the next book, okay?
To my friends and family - you always said I would, and now I have! Thank you for being there and proving yourselves right. Hugs, high fives and chest-bumps all round.
To my imaginary online buddies and fellow writers -thank you for the excitement, the critiques, the advice, the late night hysterics, the editing and the endless sources of procrastination.
And one final enormous dose of gratitude to the team at Legend Press, and to Elaine and the rest of Luke Bitmead’s family - thank you for the most gobsmacking evening of my life, and for the wonderful generosity, support and encouragement you’ve given me since then.
When and why did you start writing?
I can remember the precise moment I realised writing could be magical. I was ten, and had just discovered what a thesaurus was for. Suddenly a story didn’t simply have to tell you the practical events of ‘this’ then ‘that’; words could be chosen for their beauty, or their rhythm, or their texture. But instead of pursuing poetry, I proceeded to knock-off my favourite films and books, writing predictable ghost stories, tragic westerns, and a science fiction epic that bore an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars.
By the time I got to secondary school, writing was my lifeboat, and I wrote hundreds of thousands of words in an attempt to exist somewhere other than inside a depressed and bullied teenager. From that point to this there’s a trail of unfinished novels, screenplays and short stories, because sometimes the act of writing is more important than knowing where you’re going. And then along came White Lies.
As for the ‘why’ of it all, without being too dramatic (although, to be fair, being dramatic is an integral part of storytelling), writing is a compulsion. Fiction is as much of an escape for a writer as it is for a reader. And often it’s simply a case of having a story rattling around my head that would really rather be out of it.
The novel approaches sensitive subjects including dementia and end of life care. How important was it to you that these topics were covered accurately?
When I started writing the book, I realised there were two red flags to watch out for. First: I didn’t want to perpetuate any damaging stereotypes or myths about elderly care. And second: I didn’t want the story to be completely from an ‘outside-looking-in’ perspective. Peter’s voice had to be central, since he is the one actually going through the experience of dementia. Understandably, the majority of personal stories about dementia I found during my research were from the view of family members, but I also managed to find a few sources written by people actually living with dementia, which offered incredibly vivid and touching glimpses into their world. And that’s what I tried to recreate for White Lies.
Ultimately, the book is about individuals and how they react to a rising heap of impossible situations. Peter’s state of mind is just one facet of that journey. My aim was to focus on the details. I remember visiting relatives in nursing homes when I was younger: the smell, the oppressive heat, the frustration and fury and paranoia. A sense of loss nudged up against intense camaraderie. One of my last memories of my grandmother is seeing her throw her zimmer frame down the hall because she couldn’t get it over a lump in the carpet - a hilariously tragic moment that was so utterly her, just as she was starting to fade away.
How do you feel mental illness is portrayed by society?
I think there’s a strange dichotomy surrounding the whole issue. On one hand, media and fiction have a tendency to glorify dark, brooding characters and sociopathic heroes who in reality would be crippled with depression or at the very least be a danger to themselves. And then, on the other hand, we have real life, where mental illness is something people feel incredibly uncomfortable talking about. It’s grossly misunderstood, and yet so prevalent - ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away.
We live in a big, weird, complex world and not everyone’s brain is going to react the same
way to all the stimuli and pressure and stress we’re exposed to. There’s a huge amount of social anxiety over ‘fixing’ mental illness, rather than acknowledging it. The human brain is incredible - we can adapt and symptoms can often be alleviated, but the solution is not always about trying to make these problems disappear. What often gets forgotten is the fact that there’s a person behind the condition who needs to be seen and heard before anything can change.
Your novel is about family secrets, how has having children changed your perception of family relationships?
I think having kids makes you realise the challenges your parents faced and helps you to understand the choices they’ve made - whether you agree with them or not. We all have good relationships and bad family relationships, but most of them are anchored in childhood - those little flashes of memory are what your siblings and your parents are formed of. And then you’re all adults together and sometimes you need to completely rewrite your relationships to accommodate the fact that those familial connections aren’t quite so simple any more.
White Lies explores the milestones of life - from childhood and parenthood to old age. How did you go about researching the novel and creating your characters?
I actually found Peter easier to write than Matthew, despite him being so far away in age from me. Perhaps deep down I’m just an angry old man. With both characters, I started with a premise and they grew from there. For Matthew it was the difficulty of dealing with the death of someone he hated. How do you deal with that situation? Especially when everyone’s looking to you for help? For Peter it was a case of fear and denial: he sees ageing as a sort of disgrace and he doesn’t want to face up to what he’s leaving behind. Neither of them knows what they want, but they’re determined to blame someone else for their situation.
The novel had its own milestones, too. I started writing it soon after my first son was born, and finished the first draft just before my second son was born. When you become a parent, there’s suddenly this new awareness of the million little things that contribute to your child’s personality - how you affect your child’s view of the world, how they are shaped by their experiences and their relationships, how easy it is to get it wrong. It’s an overwhelming responsibility at times. And you start to see the trace of family in everyone – what made them that way, what they’re going to pass onto their own kids, what’s nature and what’s nurture. And in case you’re asking what I think you’re asking: no, neither my parents nor my children are depicted in any way in White Lies.
Who are your favourite writers?
I have an enormous space in my heart for Kurt Vonnegut. He has a way of finding humanity and humour in the deepest darkness. Then there’s Joseph Heller, Amy Hempel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakespeare, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith… Too many to mention. I read a lot of short fiction and non-fiction, too.
What did it mean to you to win the Luke Bitmead Bursary?
Winning the bursary felt like being very, very drunk without actually having had anything to drink. It was a big, lucky leapfrog into the publishing world and I am so grateful to Legend Press and Luke Bitmead’s family for making it happen. It’s inspiring to work with a group of people who are so generous in their support of new writers, and who have such an admirable goal of raising awareness of the truths of mental illness. And I feel proud for White Lies to be a part of that.
White Lies was the Winner of the
2013 Luke Bitmead Bursary
The award was set up shortly after Luke’s death in 2006 by his family to support and encourage the work of fledgling novel writers. The top prize is a publishing contract with Legend Press, as well as a cash bursary.
We are delighted to be working with Luke’s family to ensure that Luke’s name and memory lives on – not only through his work, but through this wonderful memorial bursary too. For those of you lucky enough to have met Luke you will know that he was hugely compassionate and would love the idea of another struggling talented writer being supported on the arduous road to securing their first publishing deal.
We will ensure that, as with all our authors, we give the winner of the bursary as much support as we can, and offer them the most effective creative platform from which to showcase their talent. We can’t wait to start reading and judging the submissions.
We are pleased to be continuing this brilliant bursary for a seventh year, and hope to follow in the success of our previous winners Andrew Blackman (On the Holloway Road, February 2009), Ruth Dugdall (The Woman Before Me, August 2010), Sophie Duffy (The Generation Game, August 2011), J.R. Crook (Sleeping Patterns, July 2012), Joanne Graham (Lacey’s House, May 2013), and Jo Gatford (White Lies, July 2014).
For more information on the bursary and all
Legend Press titles visit:
www.legendpress.co.uk
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