SPOTLIGHT: The Accusation by Zosia Wand @zosiawand @aria_fiction @hoz_books
The Accusation
by Zosia Wand
Spotlighting this suspenseful mystery! Come read about the book, the author, read her guest post about "What is a Family?" and continue to read the prologue! Enjoy, readers!
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publish Date: June 1, 2018
Kindle Edition
352 Pages
Standalone
Genres: Thriller, Mystery
Who
would you choose if you had to - your daughter or your husband?
Eve
lives in the beautiful Cumbrian town of Tarnside with her husband Neil. After
years of trying, and failing, to become parents, they are in the final stages
of adopting four-year-old Milly. Though she already feels like their daughter,
they just have to get through the 'settling in' period: three months of living
as a family before they can make it official.
But
then Eve's mother, Joan, comes to stay. Joan has never liked her son-in-law. He
isn't right for Eve; too controlling, too opinionated. She knows Eve has always
wanted a family, but is Neil the best man to build one with?
Then
Joan uncovers something that could smash Eve's family to pieces...
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*picture credit to Mark Harrison
Zosia Wand is an author and playwright. She was born
in London and lives in Cumbria with her family. She is passionate about good
coffee, cake and her adopted landscape on the edge of the Lake District. Her
first novel, Trust Me, was published by Head of Zeus in 2017.
What
Is A Family?
I am often asked how I come up with my
ideas. The truth is that a novel or a
play are usually two or three ideas that come together. A situation I want to explore, a character
that intrigues me and something I want to say.
So my first novel, Trust Me,
started with three ideas. Firstly, a
character in a difficult situation: a young, not-quite-step-mother to a teenage
boy. Secondly, grooming, and how society
tends to assume teenage boys are less vulnerable than teenage girls. Thirdly, the juxtaposition of a dark story
against the beautiful backdrop of the Lake District. My new novel, The Accusation takes that same beautiful setting for a dark story,
follows the adoption process as Eve and Neil adopt four year old Milly and
explores the theme of motherhood. What
assumptions do we make about mothers and how they should be? At what point does a mother’s love become
obsessive, even toxic?
I am interested in complicated family
dynamics and the way characters create relationships in order to survive and
support one another. The traditional
nuclear family: Mum, Dad and two children, is no longer the norm in Britain. Divorce is common and remarriages, gay
marriages and some very interesting and successful alternative arrangements
exist all around us. This is beginning
to be reflected in novels, films and television, but it’s taken a while, and we
are only just scratching the surface. My
stage play, Quicksand, featured a
family of three. Two women and a teenage
boy they had brought up together. They
were not a gay couple, but two Polish migrants.
Renata was the breadwinner and business woman, and Ula, to all intents
and purposes, was her ‘wife’. She took
care of Renata’s son and managed the house.
Her undefined role as housekeeper and unacknowledged mother to Leo, form
the heart of the story. Sally
Wainwright’s hugely successful television series, Happy Valley, featured a similar family set up, with Sarah
Lancashire’s grandchild, the son of the psychopath who raped her daughter,
being brought up by his grandmother and her sister. That family set up is unusual and not without
its difficulties, but all the warmer and richer for that. My next novel, The Treehouse, will focus on two minor characters from The Accusation, Eve’s next door
neighbour, India and her ‘mother’ Kath.
Kath is not, as Eve assumes, India’s mother. Kath’s daughter, Julie, lives in London.
India is Julie’s best friend and almost-sister, Kath’s unofficial foster
daughter. Almost daughter and almost
sister. The ‘almost’ is the heart of the
story. India stayed in Tarnside while
Julie moved away and Kath finds it easier to be with India than she does
Julie. So what happens when Julie moves
back?
It’s these undefined, unacknowledged
relationships that interest me, because they are often the most unexpected and
generous, and also the most vulnerable.
There is no precedent to follow, no previous experience. When these relationships are put under pressure
from an external source, they are forced to define themselves and sometimes,
fight to survive. It’s the gap between
the familiar, what we understand to be the norm, and what has been forged from
necessity provides me with a rich seam for stories. I like, what I call, salvaged families. Individuals who come together, often as a
result of painful event, to create a unit of support. It’s not just mothers who do the mothering in
our society. I send several cards out on
Mother’s Day every year for this very reason.
There are a number of individuals I am compelled to thank for providing
me with the love, support and advice I have needed in this life. Aunts, neighbours, older, wiser friends. The person who really mothered me was not a
blood relative and someone I spent just two months of the year with, but when I
shower my children with kisses and prepare their food and really love them, it’s her I remember. Ciocia (Aunty) Marysia. The lifelong friend and companion of my
grandfather’s spinster sister, Zosia, in Poland. I am named after them and was loved by them
both, but it was Marysia who did the mothering.
She was an orphan, brought up by nuns and had no mother of her own, but
her love bridged the physical distance that divided us for most of the year and
overcame the difficulties of Soviet rationing, censorship and martial law to
shower me with treats. She was my safe
haven and every story I tell is a tribute to the family she created simply
through love.
PROLOGUE
I know something
about fear. I know it can be red and urgent, the roar of a dragon, flames in
your face. We all recognise that. You will know it as something brief and
fierce, leaving smoke and ashes, sometimes scalded flesh. This fear is
different. My fear is not hot and fiery, but grey and quiet, lingering in the
shadows. It’s a chill breath on my neck, a whispered warning in my ear. I have
no idea why it follows me. I have never experienced real danger, never suffered
an act of extreme violence, but I live with a sense of something lurking. If I
do the right thing, if I follow the rules and keep everyone happy, all will be
well, but if I get it wrong, something terrible will pounce. I’ve learned to be
one step ahead, becoming stealthy, slipping out of sight, dodging the icy drips
and sidestepping the puddles. Always alert.
I sense it before the phone rings.
Feel its cold grip on my hand as I try to accept the call. Neil’s name on the
screen. My fingers won’t move. I have no reason to think this is anything other
than the call I was expecting, to tell me that lunch is ready, that he and
Milly are waiting for me. But I know before I tap the screen, before I hear the
breathless panic in his voice, I know.
‘Eve?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Milly.’
A bitter cold pressing into my back,
seeping through my flesh and between the bones beneath. Please, not this.
‘She’s
gone.’
This sounds like a great thriller. I may have to add it to my TBR.
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