The Pact

Preface

Authors are often asked where we get our ideas from and most of us have a stock answer. My own is that ideas are all around us: in the quirky behaviour of a stranger, an eccentric remark accidentally overheard, a chance juxtaposition. Those of us who write recognise these gems for what they are: tiny seeds that with a bit of luck and a whole lot of work might perhaps grow into a story. My stock answer is entirely true, and yet the best ideas, the ones that lead to the finest, almost effortless novels, are the ones that come from nowhere. They appear, often fully-formed, in our heads as if by magic, and so it was with The Pact.

I cannot tell you where or when it was that I thought of six privileged youngsters entering into a sinister agreement in which one of them takes onto herself the blame for the group’s actions, and is rewarded, years later, by a favour from each of them. All I knew was that this was a great idea for a story, and one that I would write soon.

It had a particular resonance because my own son was nearing the end of his school days. He was lucky enough, due to geography, his parents’ reasonable means and his own brains and hard work, to have attended one of the finest independent schools in England – Oxford’s Magdalen College School. When I started work on the book, he’d recently been appointed to the senior prefect team (had even been considered for the Head of School role), he was interviewing at Oxford, was predicted excellent A levels, was a keen sportsman and, from what we could see, a happy and popular member of the school. Over the years, we’d come to know many of his friends, every bit as smart and talented as he (some much more so, but we won’t hold it against them). I was surrounded, it seemed, by the country’s golden youth, by the finest, most promising of our young people. We knew (I knew) how very lucky we were.

And yet, being the woman I am, I was tortured by doubt. The wheel of fortune turns relentlessly, and nothing in this life is for certain. It could still, I knew, go horribly wrong for these lovely fledgling adults.

(As it happens, it kind of did. Covid struck, robbing these youngsters and thousands like them of so much that was crucial to their personal development and physical and mental well-being. But The Pact is not about the pandemic and so we’ll move on)

In The Pact, it is a moment of stupidity that destroys the golden future of my six characters. Fuelled by alcohol, drugs and an arrogant belief in their own invincibility, they give into a moment of mindlessness, and their actions lead to the deaths of three people. In a heartbeat, everything is changed and my six young friends have gone from the crest of the mountain to scrambling in the dirt at the very bottom.

I felt for them. We’ve all done stupid things in our time. These were not bad kids, just thoughtless ones that had made a terrible mistake. It was a hard book to write. I wanted to make everything OK for them, in the same way I would for my son, were he to find himself in such a dreadful position. But I was as powerless to wave a magic wand for Megan, Amber, Talitha, Xavier, Dan and Felix as I would be to cancel out the mistakes of any other independent adult. We must all, ultimately take responsibility for our own actions.

And so all I could do was see how events panned out…

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