Three things inspired The Missing – my mother and grandmothers, my son, and my love of abnormal psychology. My late grandmother Milbrough (Millie) had eleven children, a husband and a haulage business in the Worcestershire countryside. My other late grandmother, Olivia, had six children, a husband and lived in a mining community in Northumbria. They were matriarchs, the person family life revolved around, and they were loved and respected in equal measure. It’s only now that I have a small family of my own that I realize what incredible women they were. How strong must they have been to juggle that many children, a home, a marriage and a business. How tired must they have felt when they fell into bed every night. How stressed.

My mum continued the tradition of strong women in our family – an army wife with three children who set up her own florist business, and then re-trained to be a teacher in her forties – but she’s not alone. There are millions of women in this country, in the world, juggling home, family, ailing parents and work. As women we often put the needs of others before ourselves. We give up our time, our dreams and sometimes our food to provide for our children. We want everyone to be happy and, often, we put our own happiness last. I wanted to write a novel about a woman who was desperately trying to keep her family together, who had chosen to remain in an ailing marriage rather than break up their home and who no longer knew the minutiae of her children’s lives. I was struck by how quickly your children can change when my son went to pre-school earlier this year. Within months he was using words and phrases he hadn’t used before. He had friends I hadn’t met. He seemed to leap from toddler to young boy overnight and I found it quite disconcerting. I no longer had any control over what he heard, what he saw or what he did. I realized that my influence would continue to diminish as he continued to grow up, particularly when he hit his teenaged years.

That’s why I made Billy fifteen. I wanted him to be young enough to be vulnerable but old enough to be somewhat independent. I wanted him to have dreams and ambitions that his parents didn’t share and secrets that he’d never tell his mother. I wanted to explore what would happen when Claire, a control freak by nature, realized she no longer knew the son she’d nurtured for so many years. I wanted to see how she’d react when her family began to fall apart.