Now that my main characters, Hazel and Tina, are at University, I find myself getting nostalgic for ‘Hazel Fauld’s Schooldays’ (I would use that as a title, but it’s sort of been done).

Anyway, the book after ‘Sisters’ (which comes out in April) will be called ‘Roisin’ and I’ve started to write bits of it to make a change. I’ve just done a flashback in which a twenty year old Hazel remembers more innocent childhood days, and a sleepover at Marlene Graham’s when she was 14. It’s been nice to revisit old characters like Gillian Rogers and dreamy Tamsin Phipps. I won’t tell you why she’s remembering it: it would spoil the surprise, but here’s a short extract.

“Some of the girls had brought teen magazines, ranging from what was still basically kids’ stuff like ‘Michelle’, to the more adult ‘Girl Town’.  And Marlene and Gillian had great fun reading out the agony columns, or as Gillian described them: “the ‘can you get pregnant by kissing?’ page.”  There were Pop stars to ogle and fashions to dissect, some of which had been designed by or, just as often, plagiarised from, my mother.  But it wasn’t just sex, threads and Rock n’ Roll.  Big, thuggish Gillian had brought a glossy colour magazine called ‘Kitten Play’ which despite what you’re probably thinking, turned out to be about baby cats.  Gillian adored them.  Her school books and bag were festooned with cat stickers.  It was her one saving grace as far as I was concerned.  Tamsin, meanwhile, had brought a couple of her ‘Bizarre but True’ mags.  This month’s featured a flying saucer that had apparently crashed near a small village in France in 1968. Another told of a UFO that had shadowed an American nuclear submarine underwater for hours, before streaking off, still below the waves, at near hypersonic speeds.  There was an article explaining that there were vast chasms at both poles where the UFOs flew in and out from secret underground hanger decks.  And one thing these writings all had in common was the warning that the Government had known all about it for decades, but were hushing it up.  Any witnesses who let slip what they’d seen had a way of being visited by sinister people who dressed in black, drove black American limousines and wore mirrored shades even in a murky English February, and who got very pointed about them keeping their mouths shut in future.  I must confess to being impressed that our government managed to keep anything hushed up for more than a day or two given that the same bunch were forever leaving laptops full of top-secret data behind in taxis, or getting caught with their pants down in gay clubs while promoting homophobic legislation in Parliament!  I did wonder though, how the ‘Tamsin Stuff Times’, or whatever it was really called, still managed to hear about, let alone publish a whole magazine full of these things every month without fail, when there were all these scary persons in black about to make sure no-one said anything.  Presumably, although happy to intimidate individuals, the spooks still firmly believed in the freedom of the press!”