My forthcoming novel The Girl in the Empty Room was originally
entitled The Damage Done, in
reference to the famous Neil Young song The
Needle and the Damage Done.
It was name-checked in a chapter later cut from
the book (hence the change of title). In the edited scene (pasted below), one
of the main characters from the novel, a conflicted, deeply unhappy young
woman, listens to a cover version of the song:
Lighting the joint, she got up and
walked over to the stereo. Her favourite Laura Marling album was still in the
CD player. She hit the play button, and what must've been random at the same
time, as The Needle and the Damage Done
started first, not the opening track. Still standing, Jacqueline took a long
draw on the joint, holding the smoke in for as long as she could. I heard you knocking on the cellar door, hey
baby can I have some more. She closed her eyes, her mind wandering back to
the time she played the record for a bloke she'd picked up in town, Ray, the
journalist or writer or whatever. Cringing inside, she remembered how stupid
she felt when he told her the song was a Neil Young cover. No, no, this is
Laura Marling, she argued, and felt like such a dick when she checked the album
sleeve and discovered that he was right. It was as if she didn't know anything
about life or music, about anything that was important to her. And after he
left next morning, and she looked back over the last seven or eight years, she
knew she hadn't done anything of any worth, never had a proper job – half a
summer in a local pub before she fell pregnant with the twins. And what was
probably worse, she couldn't see anything new, different or exciting happening
in her life for at least the next ten years, when the twins would be getting
ready to leave school. And ten years seemed like a lifetime. By then she'd be
approaching forty, middle age, and she knew she'd have so many regrets, that
she'd look back on her life, and realize she hadn't achieved anything, that her
best years had been wasted, spent staring at these four ugly walls. And this
really, really scared her.
As a writer, I’ve always been
interested in the impact big emotional turmoil can have on people, how one tragic
event can go on to define a person’s life, be it the death of a loved one, parents’
divorcing (as in Jacqueline’s case in the novel), an accident or illness,
bankruptcy or drink and drug abuse. No matter how hard they try to escape they
will always be trapped by the past. With the Jacqueline character in The Girl in the Empty Room, I wanted to
try and depict an individual struggling to shake the same shackles – hard done
by, unlucky in love, a single mum with an over reliance on drink and drugs
–stuck in that one moment when her parents’ divorced and everything changed,
something she could never forgive them for. I wanted to portray her as someone
having the same argument over and over again, no matter what situation she found
herself in, or whose company, even though the original discussion took place over
a decade ago.
When I was outlining the novel,
sketching out notes on the main characters, I was reminded of something from my
own past. When I was growing up, we had a family dog, a Yorkshire Terrier
called Huggy Bear (a nod to Starsky and
Hutch). Even when he was just a puppy the Bear was a real showman, a crowd
pleaser with oodles of personality and charm. Whenever we took him out for
walks on the beach or cliff tops near where we lived, he’d scamper over to
passing holidaymakers or day-trippers, roll onto his back, encouraging them to
scratch his belly. But he was a brave little fucker, too. Many a time, he’d face
off and scare the shit out of hulking Alsatians, Boxers or Dobermans. A real
ankle-biter, he would never back down. When my father decided to keep chickens,
the Bear had some legendary scraps with a brutal cockerel, fur and feathers
sent flying high into the air. I loved that dog. He never knew when he was
beaten.
There was one odd quirk about him,
though – away from his various canine Walter Mitty-isms. I can’t quite remember
when or how it came about, but whenever the postman delivered the morning mail,
the Bear would savage the letters deposited before they’d even hit the mat. We
couldn’t understand it. We couldn’t work out why he’d all of sudden developed
such hatred for the post. It became a real pain in the arse. I personally lost
letters from pen pals, and a pretty sweet Indiana Jones poster won in a Smith’s
crisps competition. It wasn’t until years later (literally) that we finally got
to the bottom of things. One morning, I happened to walk through from the
kitchen to see the postman tapping on the front room window, bouncing from foot
to foot, pulling funny faces, sticking up his fingers, mocking the Bear through
the glass, teasing him into a frenzy. Hence, when the letters dropped onto the
mat, he tore them to pieces.
No matter how hard we tried to
rehabilitate him, that behavioural pattern remained. The teasing he endured at
the hands of that bastard postman had shaped him forever more, scarring him for
life. No matter which house we moved to, he never snapped out of it. And while his
was the mind of a beast, I often see parallels in the behavioral patterns of
people. I see the way a failed relationship, an infidelity or domestic violence
can scar them, making them mistrustful of others. I see how bullying and
teasing can force a person so far back into their shell they’ve no hope of
emerging ever again. I see the no less devastating consequences of overbearing
parents, or siblings given preferential treatment, things which shape and
misshape, distort and transform, things carried into adult life that were engendered
in us before we even had basic human cognizance. The damage done indeed. And it
makes me wonder why any of us bother leaving the womb.
The
Girl in the Empty Room is now available to pre-order. Simply click on the
link below:
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