What took me so long?

I’m always slightly bemused when people ask an older debut novelist why they came to writing ‘so late’, or ‘what took them so long?’ I realise the question comes out of curiosity and is usually well-meant, but it strikes me as somewhat confrontational and ageist.

Perhaps, as someone whose debut novel was published when I was fifty-five, I’m being overly defensive. I remember when The Rumour first came out and spent two glorious weeks in the Sunday Times Top Ten, someone asked me how I felt that this success was happening now and not when I was younger. The question was accompanied by a sideways tilt of the head, as these sorts of questions so often are, presumably indicating a level of concern on my behalf. The implication appeared to be, ‘Isn’t it a shame that you didn’t achieve your writing ambitions when you were still young enough to enjoy them?’

Naturally, I would have loved to have been published a little earlier in my life. After all, being a writer has been my lifelong dream. But for so many people, that is what it remains: a dream. To have achieved this in my fifties – indeed, to have achieved it at all – is the most deliciously satisfying thing that has ever happened to me, and let me assure any younger person reading this, pleasure and delight in one’s achievements doesn’t end at the age of forty. Ambitions and dreams only wither and die if we let them.

While there are several things that I know I did far too young (lost my virginity at fourteen, got married at nineteen), I have, in all other respects, been a late starter. But then, starting something late is much, much better than never starting it at all, don’t you think? I went to university in my thirties, by which time I had two young children. Then I trained as a teacher. One divorce, several promotions, another marriage, a couple of ghastly managerial positions, a diagnosis of endometriosis after ten years of debilitating pain, two major operations and a bout of clinical depression later, I finally decided to prioritise my writing – that semi-secret passion that had been bubbling away under the surface for as long as I could remember.

And the rest, as they say, is …

No, it isn’t history. It’s right now, and I’m enjoying every second of it. My second novel, Who Did You Tell, came out this year (also a Sunday Times bestseller – and yes, I will shout about it). My third, The Dare, is due out in March and the fourth will be published in 2022. Four novels in four years and lots more planned. Not bad for an ‘old girl’, eh?