Settings: Fictional Versus Real
It’s no secret that the fictional seaside town of Flinstead-on-Sea – the setting for both The Rumour and Who Did You Tell – is inspired by the very real town of Frinton-on-Sea, in North Essex.
I moved to Frinton in the summer of 2014. I grew up in Chelmsford but left when I was eighteen and moved to London, so relocating to such a small coastal town after all those years in a big city was a real culture shock. It took me quite a while to adapt to a slower, gentler pace of life.
It was round about this time that I was also focussing my efforts on writing a novel and I used to take long walks by the sea for ‘thinking purposes’ and potter along Connaught Avenue getting acquainted with the little shops. Without ever consciously deciding to set a novel here, the essence of Frinton nevertheless seeped into my opening pages and took up residence.
Some people have asked me why I decided to fictionalise the town - why didn’t I just call it Frinton and be done with it - and I do remember thinking long and hard about this. But I came to the conclusion that if I did that, then I’d have to get the geography exactly right, and what would I do about street names and the names of shops? I didn’t want to upset anyone by getting the details wrong, or by mentioning, or not mentioning, a specific place. I wanted to be free to make the setting work for my novels, rather than being constrained by it, so I renamed it Flinstead and created a town that is similar to Frinton in lots of ways, but different in others.
When The Rumour first came out, I remember being amused when locals said things to me like: ‘I know that street you mention in chapter 1 is my street’ or when a friend said: ‘I recognised my kitchen in chapter 14.’ And I was horrified when someone told me they knew exactly who I’d based one of the characters on! Because of course, they were all completely wrong. But that’s what happens when you set a novel in a place people know - even if you do give it another name and mix it up a bit!
It gets even more complicated when it comes to the US editions of my books. The Rumor, whilst still set in a fictional town called Flinstead, was transposed to America. But with Who Did You tell, we came to the decision to keep it in Britain. So if you’re an American or Canadian reader, you need to get your head round not one, but two Flinsteads, separated by the Atlantic Ocean!
But in the end, it doesn’t really matter where Flinstead is, because it only truly exists within the pages of my first two novels. Flinstead is a fictional town.
Well, sort of…