There is nothing like the buzz of working at a hotel in the run-up to its launch. (OK, maybe the phone call telling you your novel is a Reese pick is even more exciting, but you get my point…)
The frenzied preparation, the new staff arriving and being trained, the endless supplies, from champagne to antique maps to taxidermy peacocks, trundling onto site in golf carts, the perfectionist last-minute staging (that is, checking all the tiny details are just so: making sure the toilet rolls are all hanging the right way round, confirming the straws on the bar are cut to the correct size for the crystal glasses, tightening the cable ties hiding the electrical wires behind the lamps…)
I know all of this, because I’ve been there. In fact, it was in the middle of this hive of activity at Soho Farmhouse, a soon-to-open countryside members club in the Cotswolds, that it occurred to me what a brilliant setting such a place (or an exaggerated, invented version of it) might be for a murder mystery (not that I wrote it at the time. It took a good few more years—and teaming up with my husband, Paul, who had written two novels previously—to do that).
The launch was set for the dusty height of summer in 2015 and everyone working for the company (which included me at the time, as their editorial director) who could be persuaded to don a pair of sturdy boots and a neon yellow safety vest was shipped up to the collection of luxury cabins and cottages, hot tubs, spas, bars and restaurants, to lend a helping hand with it all. How thrilling it could be, I thought, to throw a few fictional murderers into the mix (very unlike the lovely and non-homicidal people I worked with and for at Soho House, of course). A modern Miss Marple with a Soho House membership card, sleuthing her way around a cast of a cast of murky A-list characters in an idyllic setting.
“Because alongside the fancy dinners and free handbags, there were monosyllabic interviewees, couture-thieving cover stars and tantrum-throwing talent who turned up several days late for a shoot, without explanation or apology.”
Helpfully, I had a fairly well-developed idea of how those characters might behave because before that job, I had spent a decade working in fashion magazines, and just like Home’s membership director Annie (who has a similar professional background) I had more than a few enlightening celebrity experiences, lots of them wonderful, some of them very far from it.
Because alongside the fancy dinners and free handbags, there were monosyllabic interviewees, couture-thieving cover stars and tantrum-throwing talent who turned up several days late for a shoot, without explanation or apology. I was fascinated by the Jekyll and Hyde aspect of fame—the famously charming and erudite actors who remained mute, the enfants terribles singers who were actually adorable, the strong, moody silent types that turned out to be chatty and warm, remembering the name of every single person on set.
I came to understand that there is a unique set of pressures that public scrutiny exerts on a person over time, how intense the need to not be seen—to go somewhere you wouldn’t be judged for not being the fictional version of yourself a fan had their head—must be, especially in the age of the camera phone. That place, in The Club, is Island Home. And the Home Group’s CEO Ned Groom, having lulled his members into a false sense of security, ensuring his clubs are—outwardly at least—a discreet home away from home, uses this to his advantage.
Our travels as a couple had a part to play in the novel’s inspiration too. One of the more glamorous parts of my job, when I worked in magazines, was being commissioned to write the occasional travel feature. I would be sent off to some far-flung location, often with Paul in tow, to write about a new resort opening or try out a new spa. This would almost always involve meeting the hotel’s PR or manager for dinner—and some of the stories they would share over a cocktail about what guests got up to in their suites would make your eyes pop. They ranged from the ridiculous (the story of an editor on a press junket bringing her living room curtains in her suitcase and expecting them to be dry cleaned for free) to the gruesome (you would be astonished at how many hotels have dealt with a dead body).
Island Home, the fictional island that Ned Groom has bought on which to build his luxury resort, was also informed by a trip we’ve taken—to Osea, a private island off the coast off Essex, just over an hour from London, owned by a famous record producer. You can pay to stay there—which we did—and access is over a tidal causeway which gets flooded, twice a day, with a current so strong it could wash your car away, and fast. There are actually a few such islands off this part of the English coast, another being Foulness (yes, really—what a great name!), which was leased by the Ministry of Defence, sections of which are still out of bounds to the public.
The thing about writing novels, we have found, is that, over years, you build a bank of images and scenarios in your head—informed by where you’ve been, who you’ve met and what you’ve seen—to draw upon as you work to create a world and bring your characters to life. One of the great things about writing as a couple—and sharing so many of these experiences with each other—is that we always had someone else to bounce ideas off, someone else to remind us of something we’ve experienced that might spark a plot twist. I guess we make the perfect partners in crime!
