The September Garden (31 page)

The September Garden
has been four years in the making and proves what they say: that the second novel is often the hardest. There have certainly been a few setbacks, including two titles and two rewrites, and I’m so grateful to my agent Judith Murdoch for always believing in me and encouraging me along what has been a very long journey.

The first spark for the story came from
The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont
(Random House), which I picked up in a second-hand bookshop. This feisty and independent Normandy château owner gives her firsthand account of living in occupied France and through the hopeful and desperate days of the Allied invasion. Haunted and inspired by her shocking experiences, I went from there, linking the story back to England with the idea of two cousins who were caught up in the dark, uncertain days of the conflict.

A huge amount of research has gone into creating a
convincing background for my characters, including days spent at the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Liberation Museum, Cherbourg, plus devouring many articles and books. I’d like to thank Neil Wood for lending me his 78-volume
Images of War, The Real Story of World War Two
(Marshall Cavendish), which gave me valuable insight into what people would have known at the time (through newspaper headlines and reports) often in contrast to how much more we know now.

To write truthfully about a place, I have to see it with my own eyes, and I’d like to thank my mother Coral for coming with me on my recce trip to Normandy and navigating so patiently while I drove our hire car so erratically through the French countryside. We arrived, coincidently, on the 65th anniversary of D-Day and everywhere we went, through towns and villages, we saw Allied flags and
Welcome to our Liberators
banners. We stayed in Valognes in the Grand Hotel du Louvre, a turreted building of silvery stone on a narrow cobbled street. It was there that I discovered, in the quiet courtyard behind, the stables of the long-departed horses Tatillon and Ullis.

Other books that have inspired many aspects of my novel include:
Forgotten Voices of the Second World War
by Max Arther,
Debs at War
by Anne de Courcy and
Wild Mary: The Life of Mary Wesley
by Patrick Marnham. Plus the writings of war-time correspondent Edward Murrow,
This is London
, and the books of two great novelists who experienced the war: Nevil Shute’s
Pastoral
and H.E. Bates’
A Moment in Time.

C
ATHERINE
L
AW
was born in Harrow, Middlesex in 1965 and has been a journalist for twenty-two years, having trained first as a secretary at the BBC and then attending the London College of Printing. She now works on a glossy interiors magazine and lives in Buckinghamshire.