She wasn’t home alone... With her love life in tatters, Kate Wilson needs a fresh start, and where could be better than the old Cornish house that had belonged to her godmother? There’s just one problem – it comes with a ghost as a sitting tenant.
Believe it or not, the main inspiration behind my latest book, The Unquiet Spirit, was my husband. I’d been writing for several years and, while I’ve written a couple of contemporary short stories, I’d never written a contemporary novel. All my previous books are set in the Regency period (well, I am a historian and I love writing about the past) and as my husband prefers stories set in the present day he asked me if I would write a contemporary tale.
Anyway, after some thought, I decided I could do this –– surely it would mean less research, so easy-peasy, right? Wrong! Writing a modern day story takes just as much research as a story with a historical setting. Also, I’d thought of a crafty way in which I could introduce historical elements to my modern story; having a ghost or two was my cunning plan, because where do ghosts come from? That’s right, the past.
If you have ghosts, they have to haunt somewhere, so my next step was to find a house. I did this by browsing the internet; Rightmove is great for this sort of thing. I needed something quite old, a bit rambling but not derelict, and preferably somewhere in the West Country.
When the right one popped up on my screen I knew it would be perfect as The Beeches. Built a bit haphazardly, with some parts of it dating from the 17th century while other parts were built in the 18th century, it suited my storyline. It also came with a floor plan, which was brilliant for helping me plot scenes and work out where my characters would be. I have to confess, this house wasn’t located in Cornwall.
The main setting of my story was the easy part; I love Cornwall, especially the area round Falmouth. My husband and I try to visit there every year. Falmouth appears in two of my historical novels (A Bachelor’s Pledge and An Adventurer’s Contract) so I’d already undertaken a lot of research about life there in the early 1800s, which made blending my knowledge of the two time periods relatively easy.
Falmouth has always been a bustling, lively place and its situation on the coast at the mouth of the Fal River is stunning. I hope I’ve managed to convey my feelings about Falmouth into my story, and that it evokes the same emotions in my readers.
Another major setting is the city of Bath –– another of my favourite places. I’m probably more familiar with the streets of Bath than I am of Oxford, which is the nearest city to where I currently live. Walking the streets and sideroads of Bath with its wonderful Regency architecture can be like stepping back in time, especially if you can block out the traffic noise.
At the time when I was researching this story I discovered a showhome on Great Pulteney Street; this was one of the original large Regency houses that was being redeveloped into luxury apartments. Of course, I had to have a look around, and this fabulous apartment made it into the modern part of my story.
Although The Unquiet Spirit is a cosy mystery/romance, there are some serious elements. Life for some of its characters is not easy. I decided to introduce a character who suffers from the longterm debilitating illness, ME/CFS, the results of which affect not only her, but her family. I think family carers are present day unsung heroes, who receive very little help or acknowledgement for the work they do. Showing how family and friends rally round was therefore important.
The illness, ME/CFS has been around for a long time and has been dismissed in the past as being trivial or malingering, making those who suffer from it feel as if they are to blame for not trying hard enough to recover. In fact, many sufferers are housebound or even bed bound, their once active lives destroyed, and they receive virtually no support from the medical establishment.
Thankfully, new research this year has proved conclusively that ME/CFS is a real physical illness and at last there is hope that in the future treatments may be found. The Unquiet Spirit was one small way that I could help shed some light on this dreadful illness and its almost two million UK sufferers.
Finally, there is another issue that I highlight in this story, but because I don’t want to give spoilers, all I will say is that it is something that is perceived as mainly affecting women. However, I wanted to show that men are also affected and shouldn’t be ashamed of speaking out.
So you can see that there were many different factors that influenced this story: my love of old houses and beautiful parts of the country, my strong feelings that certain issues should be spoken about and discussed, but most of all, my desire for producing an uplifting, feelgood story to showcase the enduring power of love.
Penny Hampson
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About the Author
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