Rhys on Little Girls

RHYS BOWEN: Please raise a glass to celebrate with me. I have finished my new stand-alone, the one I am tentatively calling IN AN ABANDONED PLACE, but might end up being called THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE, THE LOST VILLAGE, THE LOST GIRLS, THE LAST LITTLE GIRL  etc etc. Stay tuned!

Anyway, as I've mentioned in previous what we're writing weeks, the story is about little girls in various time periods...three girls who disappeared on their way to be evacuated in WWII, one little girl who has vanished in London in 1968 and a heroine who visits an abandoned village and has a flashback of memory, realizing she's been there before, which starts to unravel everything she knows about her own life.

Probably the most complicated book I've ever tried to write. Every piece of one story fills in a missing piece of another story so there was a lot of juggling about what to tell and when.

One of the vehicles I've used was to show some small random scenes from the point of view of various missing girls in the book. I never say which girl is which. I want to reader to try to guess and then put that piece into the puzzle as we learn more.

Here is one of those scenes:

A Little Girl

 The little girl was finding her suitcase too heavy and the gas mask bumped up and down across her front as she walked. It was warmed than usual and she felt hot and clammy in her good coat. But Mum had insisted she wear it. “You’ll be cold once it’s winter,” she said. “And then you’ll thank me that I made you wear it.” 

 The little girl dumped the suitcase and opened the buttons of the coat. That was better. She stood on the corner, gulping in big breaths of air that blew in from the river. She was quite excited about going to the country. She had only been out of London once, on a school outing to the seaside for the day. That had been exciting. She wondered if they’d be taken anywhere near the seaside now. Her mum didn’t know. “You’ll find out when you get there,” she had said. The little girl could see that her mum was upset she was going. That was why she didn’t want to come to the school with the other mums. She claimed she had to be at work in the factory on time but the little girl suspected it was because she knew she was going to make a fuss and cry. 

 The girl lifted her suitcase again. It weighed a ton. She reckoned her mum had packed every single thing she owned into it. On she staggered, waiting for the traffic light to turn before she crossed the busy street. 

Then she turned into a quiet backroad.Here it was peaceful after the traffic noise. Nobody else in sight. Only the sound of a radio voice giving the morning news from an upstairs window. It wasn’t far to the station now. She could see its roof, sticking up behind the rows of houses. The suitcase handle was making her hand burn. She put it down and spat on her palm. 

She wasn’t aware to begin with, of the big black car that drew up beside her. 

     “Do you need a lift somewhere?” The man inside the car had wound down his window. 

     “It’s all right. I’m only going to the station,” she said. 

     “The station? By yourself? Are you running away from home?” He asked it almost as a joke.

     “No!” She could tell the man was teasing in that annoying way grownups had. “I’ve got to meet my class an we’re getting on a train out to the country,” she said. “We’re being evacuated.” 

     “Well, I’m driving past Victoria Station, as it happens. How about I take you that far? That will save you lugging that heavy suitcase, won’t it?” 

     The little girl hesitated. She had been warned about strangers. But the man looked like someone’s uncle. What’s more he had a posh voice and he was wearing a uniform, so he must be all right. And the suitcase was jolly heavy. 

     “Thank you, sir,” she said. “It’s very kind of you.” 

     “Not at all. We all have to help each other when there’s a war on, don’t we?” He came around and opened the back door. “Put your case in there.” And then the passenger door. “Hop in. That’s right. Off we go, eh?” 

 And off they went.  

Was he a good guy or a bad guy? There are both in the book , in face one aspect of the story is the blurred lines between right and wrong. I'm really pleased with it now I've finished. My agent has seen it. She said she started reading and didn't move until she'd finished, so that's a good sign, isn't it?

I'm off to England in a few days, seeking out more hidden stories like the abandoned village. In fact I'm going to Jersey in the Channel Islands that were occupied by the Nazis during WWII so I'm hoping for juicy details from there. I'll give updates on my Facebook page.

And any brilliant title ideas?