Billed as ‘The Night Manager set in a woman’s world’, The Most Difficult Thing is a modern domestic suspense thriller set between London, Greece and the Maldives, which opens with Anna, a mother of three-year-old twins walking out on her children and her seemingly perfect life as a magazine editor, forever. Through the novel –partially based on a true crime and told by two female protagonists –we’re forced to question the nature of betrayal and what we’d sacrifice to uncover the truth.
A key part of finally writing the book I wanted to write, was, I think, failing at so many other things. This process allowed me to really know myself, and to have confidence in my own voice. That confidence pushed me through when the writing process threatened to subsume me.
What I’ve learned, in the past year since landing the book deal I’ve been working towards for nine years, is that human capacity is not infinite and you have to make space to flourish. When my first book deal was just for one book, I panicked, but after persevering and holding tight, I’ve since sold two more novels to the same publisher. The second one, A Duplicitous Life – which moves between the stories of two women whose lives mysteriously interconnect – is a reworking of that eight-year-old much-rejected manuscript. It’s proof that nothing is ever really wasted. Sometimes, you just need to bide your time, to know when the universe (or your gut) is telling you to try something else – and when it is telling you to carry on.
The Most Difficult Thing is published on 11 July by Borough Press