Thanks to City Books in Hove and everyone who came out to help me celebrate the publication of “The Perfect Couple”. It was a fabulous evening!

I had a different working title to the The Perfect Couple, one that expressed my intention–to write a hybrid between a psychological thriller and a gothic suspense. The psych thriller won out on the title and cover (publishing does not seem too keen on hybrids!), but the gothic suspense is still a strong component of the book, and what I enjoyed about writing The Perfect Couple was merging the two styles and genres, and seeing how they could play off each other.

So, the psychological thriller elements, the fears that Jacey feels about her husband, and her marriage, fuel the more gothic elements–what is she seeing and hearing that don’t seem quite real?

So, writing a book like The Perfect Couple meant looking at my own fears and emotional anxieties. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this; among my published books are the YA thriller At Yellow Lake, that deals with tangible danger to a young woman who uncovers a crime and is made vulnerable by her own mother’s poor choices. The Crowham Martyrs, for slightly younger readers, is a straightforward supernatural story, with ghosts, and witches and apparitions that torment a young girl attending a strange boarding school.

So, I clearly love this scary stuff, but why?

To begin with, I must admit that I’m a total wimp when it comes to scary movies. I once demanded 90% of my money back for a film (The Orphanage…do not go there!) because I’d only dared to watch 10% of the time. Seriously. I don’t like jump scares or gore or any full-on horror tropes, and I doubt if I could write “proper” horror, sadly.

But darkness, and indeterminate sounds, and weird shadows and light…I like those. Or, at least, I can relate to them in some way, although I’ve never felt haunted and I don’t really believe in ghosts or other phantasmic things. But I like the idea of fighting against the unseen, of battling or confronting elements that we are not completely in control of.

In books, anyway…

As a child, I was always afraid of the basement, in our relatively newly built home. It was where the laundry room was, and the piano and the TV, and it was used a lot by our family so it wasn’t particularly musty or covered with spider webs.

But it was dark, and it seemed far away from the rest of the house, and all those reassuring lights and sounds and voices. I felt alone in the basement, and possibly forgotten. Even when I was watching TV and munching on whatever fattening, tooth-destroying snacks I could find, I would occasionally stop chewing and turn around to look over my shoulder in case something had come down the stairs behind me.

So, isolation is part of what scares me. When I think of the gothic and horror stories that resonate for me (The Shining by Stephen King, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Don’t Look Now, by Daphne DuMaurier, Dark Matter by Michele Paver, and, more recently, Jump Cut by Helen Grant, to name a few) it is the sense of being alone, unseen, that is most terrifying. It’s not necessarily the landscape or household or location, per se; it’s what those places represent: the unknown, the un-knowing.

So, the basement wasn’t really the problem. It was that no one could see me (and why would anyone bother to look, after all…I had my TV show and my candy, I was fine.) It was the vulnerability of being alone.

In The Perfect Couple, Jacey is often alone. And even when she is not, she feels emotionally isolated, and unable to share any of her fears with the people who are sometimes nearby. Part of the reason is that she is afraid to trust others. A stronger part is that she’s scared to confront her own fears; it’s easier to shut down, go into a state of denial, push the dangerous, frightening thoughts out of her mind.

Another, and more recent, scary situation that writing the book re-awakened, was one that happened to me when I was alone in my own house, while going through an extremely traumatic divorce. I was woken in the night by someone (something?) knocking at the front door. I assumed it was someone I knew–my son, locked out of his flat, was my first thought–but when I looked out the stained-glass window, no one was there. The view was slightly obscured, but there was definitely no one outside my door. I assumed it was kids playing knock-down ginger, or someone who’d mistakenly knocked on the wrong door, and, somewhat rattled, went back to bed. I stayed awake, thinking about the damaged side gate that meant easy access to the garden, and the lack of a deadbolt on the front door. I even wondered if I remembered to lock the back door, and then…

Another loud knock. . Again, I crept down the stairs. Again, I looked out the window. Again, I saw no one. And while I was still watching, assuming that whoever knocked, had scarpered off and hidden somewhere, and while I knew for certain that no one was in front of the door…

Another knock. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened, knowing that something was “out there” but could not be seen. I honestly thought my heart would stop or I’d pass out with fear, but then, luckily, I looked out again and saw a glimmer in the darkness. It was almost invisible, but something was attached to the door knocker. This wasn’t a ghost. This was a trick. To get me to open the door, I wondered? To distract me, while the tricksters got into the house somehow? I managed to get back upstairs (no locks on the bedroom door–of course not!) and call the police. I explained the situation, and conveyed my fear (yes, I burst into tears) and two young officers came to check the door, secure the back gate. They found that someone–local kids, probably–had secured fishing line to the door knocker and ran the wire all the way down the road to another street.

So, a “simple prank” was so much more terrifying than it might have been because I was alone in a house that suddenly did not seem safe, and I was also going through an extremely traumatising situation in my emotional life.

Fear of what’s unseen, or even something partially seen but not clearly understood, is at the root of The Perfect Couple, just as it’s been at the root of anything that’s ever truly scared me, imaginary or real.

Years ago I visited the Design Museum’s exhibition on Stanley Kubrick. The event was stunning–film scripts, props used in his films, memorabilia from a long and influential career–but one exhibit stayed with me longer than the others.

In a darkened side room, a clip of this scene from The Shining, was playing. Wielding a baseball bat, Wendy Torrance, played by Shelly Duvall, ineffectually defends herself and her son from her violent, deranged husband Jack. She’s humiliated, goaded, demeaned by Jack’s words and actions, until finally, reluctantly, she lets him have it.

I was watching the scene with a few others. The tension was unbearable, and when Wendy finally gives Jack a much-deserved whack on the head, everyone around me cheered. Finally, Wendy had taken action. Too timidly, perhaps, too weakly, but it was a pivotal moment for her character and the film.

Also, in this section of the exhibit were stills like the one above, that seem to show Jack being supported in his bullying by the director and crew, leaving Wendy/Shelly to seem even more helpless and isolated. Knowing that there were rumours about Duvall’s poor treatment by Stanley Kubrick during the filming, and reading some of the generally derisive comments that were made about her performance at the time of the film’s release, I’ve come to think of the actress and character as powerful symbols of the way women behave and are treated in other gothic films and books.

In my book, The Perfect Couple, the gothic heroine, Jacey, is uncertain of herself in a new country and environment. She is left on her own to cope with a situation that’s challenging for her, but that her husband seems to thrive in. She is prodded and goaded by terrifying elements she doesn’t understand, and that she is too frightened of to openly share with her partner. She seems, perhaps, a bit weak. But eventually, like Shelly/Wendy, she gains her equilibrium enough to take action, to become active in her search for the truth, to gain courage and take bold action.

What’s interesting in the film The Shining is that Wendy, though initially presenting as being unable or unwilling to stand up to her domineering husband, actually assumes both masculine and feminine roles. She’s a nurturing mother and a supportive wife, but she’s also taking on the responsibilities that were meant to be Jack’s–checking the communications systems, learning how to run the boiler and make repairs. So, although the film character Wendy, as played by Duvall, was derided (by Stephen King, among others) for being less active than the original character in the book, her journey from sweet and passive to heroic is more dramatic than if she had arrived at the Overlook Hotel fully formed, with power and agency. 

Wendy’s journey from hapless victim to bad-ass monster slayer is a great story arc. Thinking about that staircase scene still gives me chills; knowing what they suffered (both Wendy and Shelly) makes their ultimate triumph over Jack and his ilk even more satisfying.