Author Interview: On Motherhood & Inspiration

Find out what inspired The Secret Mother, how Victoria handles writer’s block and how becoming a mother affected her work […]

On Location: The Secret Mother (in the City)

“They drifted across St Ann’s Square and perched on an oversized pebble near the Royal Exchange Theatre. Stuart wrapped Jen in his leather jacket to shield her from the wind. A quartet in evening dresses and dinner jackets shivered as they played The Four Seasons. The air smelt of fried onion from the hot dog stand on the corner of Cross Street.”

“The restaurant was half full of the usual lunchtime crowd. Businessmen who ate dim sum, a few local Chinese and their kids. On table six, a young couple cosied up in one of the white leather booths, playing footsie under the table. Stuart never took Jen out for a meal. He didn’t earn enough at the vinyl shop.”

“The woman giving away newspapers from a yellow booth next to Primark was blowing into her cupped hands; her sawn-off mittens unthreaded with age, her fingers blue-cold with December’s dirty news. Ricki reached for the new Nikon her parents had bought for her birthday and took a few shots of the vendor before crossing over the tram tracks onto Tib Street.”

“On the street corner: the whistle of tram wheels, the smell of candy floss, hot dogs, shop doors too heavy for bag-laden women with bronzed, unseasonable faces to open. The winter sun had disappeared behind the back of Debenhams where the silhouetted pigeons roosted. She felt an overwhelming urge to be some place warm.”

“Top Café, part of Affleck’s Palace Emporium, was her spiritual home.”

“She loved its easy, ‘stay all day drinking a can of coke’ feel, the comers and goers, the students, the grungy entrepreneurs and dealers in junk; its Budweiser bar stools, with split open seat wounds, the brown HP sauce bottles and the chalkboard menu whose contents were grouped according to Good Stuff, Bad Stuff and Snax.”

“She cut across Piccadilly Gardens, over the footbridge surrounded by geysers that sprouted cold water from the concrete when people least expected it. No kids played there in winter, only a handful of skateboarders, whipping onto the low wall, jumping freestyle off the steps and sometimes tripping uncoolly over their boards.”

Enter the world of The Secret Mother. Go behind the scenes & find out what Manchester means to Victoria […]