Before A Christmas Carol there was… Miss Marley
A seasonal tale of kindness and goodwill
Orphans Clara and Jacob Marley live by their wits, scavenging for scraps in the poorest alleyways of London, in the shadow of the workhouse. Every night, Jake promises his little sister ‘tomorrow will be better’ and when the chance to escape poverty comes their way, he seizes it despite the terrible price.
The writing of Miss Marley
My friend Vanessa Lafaye was an historical novelist who loved Dickens, just like me. We bonded over reading each other’s first novels. We could see instantly that we both had the same feeling about history, that we loved the modern world of decent medical and social care, easy transport and communications, Twitter and Facebook and having hot cross buns all year round. But imaginatively we lived in the past and didn’t want to live anytime else, thanks very much.
We discovered a mutual love of Dickens. I’d read all of his novels when I was pregnant and he became my all-time number one novelist. In one of our first conversations Vanessa suggested (jokingly, kind of) that we begin an A Christmas Carol appreciation society.
Vanessa had cancer the whole time I knew her. It didn’t define her life though and she just got on, writing gorgeous books and making dear friends throughout the writing world. We lived at opposite ends of the country, so didn’t see each other much but we kept in touch regularly via Skype calls and messaging. Her condition became terminal. This year, it became clear that her time was running out and she only had a few months left. She’d just got a new deal with HarperCollins for a prequel to A Christmas Carol called Miss Marley.
She was writing against the clock. She messaged me from a ship near New Zealand on a trip of a lifetime, asking me questions about Scrooge’s timeline and I sent her pictures of pages from the novel and talked it through. The writing was going really well and she was determined to finish it. In February 2018, we made a date to talk about her next book the following week. She died three days later. Miss Marley was two-thirds completed. Her time had run out. Too soon, too soon, for a thousand reasons.
In March 2018, HarperCollins asked me if I would consider writing the final chapters of Vanessa’s novella. I didn’t have to think about it for a second. Of course I wanted to do it. I was sent the 22,000 words Vanessa had already written and I read it with a pencil in hand, covering it in notes. I was looking for patterns in her style, such as the way she used figurative language, the details she liked to focus on and key phrases or ideas that should be reiterated and developed in the final section I was to write.
As I read, my mind automatically began projecting forward into how these plot strands might play out and where I, as a reader as much as a writer, wanted these characters to end up. We had very little information on what Vanessa planned for the ending and so, after discussion with the publishers and those close to Vanessa, it was decided that I should write the ending as I felt it should naturally end. I had a clear picture in my head of what should happen and it was agreed by my editor Kate. I was ready to write.
The deadline was tight. It was May 2018 and they wanted the book published in November of this year, in time for Christmas. I sat down at my desk to write. I could have laboured over it and edited manically as I went along and agonised over every word – does this sound like Vanessa? Is this how she would have written it? I decided that way madness lay and also it would have created stilted prose. I realised I just had to get on with it. I had to write it how it came naturally, how it flowed.
So I started writing, very fast, thousands of words a day. I got the whole thing finished in five days, around twelve thousand words. I didn’t think much as I wrote, I just let it flow. At points, it felt like a kind of channelling. Read into that what you will. That’s just how it felt at the time. It was a strange and beautiful experience. When I read what I’d written, I had no idea if it was similar to Vanessa’s style, if it worked as an ending or if people would approve of it. It’s like when you’ve been cooking a stew all day and you keep tasting it and it starts to taste of nothing. People close to Vanessa read it and they all liked it.
No changes were called for. I’ve never had so little editing in my whole writing career. It was a lovely thing to do and a sad thing to do. It brought me closer to Vanessa and made me miss her presence even more. I’m so glad I was asked and I hope she would have liked it. I’ll never know, but I did the best I could. I hope Mr Dickens wouldn’t be too outraged with it either. It’s a lovely, touching story, all about goodwill and humanity. I hope you enjoy Vanessa’s last book and I heartily I recommend you read it on Christmas Eve! Thank you.
Rebecca Mascull
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About the Author
Rebecca Mascull is the author of three historical novels, all published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Her first novel,
THE VISITORS, tells the story of Adeliza Golding, a deaf-blind child living on her father’s hop farm in Victorian Kent. Her second novel
SONG OF THE SEA MAID is set in the C18th and concerns an orphan girl who becomes a scientist and makes a remarkable discovery. Her third novel,
THE WILD AIR, is about a shy Edwardian girl who learns to fly and becomes a celebrated aviatrix but the shadow of war is looming. After previously working in education, Rebecca is now a full-time writer. She has a Masters in Writing and lives by the sea in the East of England. Rebecca also writes sagas under the pen-name Mollie Walton. Find out more at Rebecca's website
rebeccamascull.co.uk and find her on
Facebook and Twitter
@rebeccamascull
Vanessa Lafaye
