The idea for my latest thriller, Lake Child, had been bubbling away for several years before I finally managed to write it.
Lake Child
The novel tells the story of Eva, a 17-year-old girl who awakes in the attic room of her family’s remote lakeside home. She is injured, confused – and locked away. Even as I had the concept, I wasn’t sure why her parents were keeping her captive, but it seemed to me that ‘place’ would be key to the success of the story, with its themes of unreliable memory, family betrayal and isolation. In my mind’s eye, I could see Eva’s small window view; I could feel the uncertainty and terror of her situation, but for some reason I felt not quite able to bring it to the page. Now, I think perhaps the reason I delayed for so long was that I hadn’t yet landed on the right location. Then last year, while watching a travel documentary, I had the ‘eureka’ moment: this story belonged in a wooden house, in a pine forest, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Suddenly, Eva and her world began to rise up through the mist.
For many years, I had dreamed of visiting the Norwegian fjords, and here was my excuse to do it! Wanting to explore several regions many hundreds of miles apart, a cruise tour seemed to be the most economic route, and together with my family, I boarded a P&O ship in Southampton, with an itinerary promising to show us the various locations of Stavanger, Olden, Alesund and Bergen. After a day at sea (my first ever cruise experience – it was fun!), we awoke early to eerily bright morning light, and stepped out onto our balcony as the ship cut silently through peaceful waters, approaching land. It was breath-taking. From our balcony view, the Norwegian scenery was everything I had hoped it would be in reality – clean open skies and unfeasibly blue waters, a lush sloping backdrop of field and valley – and even before I set foot in Norway, I knew I had found my story’s setting. It was in Olden, our second stop, that I found the place which most closely resembled my fictional community of ‘Valden’ – a rural landscape of forest and fjord, of cascading waterfalls and ancient glaciers, where all across the hillside, tiny red, yellow and white cabins nestled alongside blazing wildflowers and grazing goats. The beauty and isolation of the place proved to be a driving force in the story, and much of what I discovered there, both from a location and cultural perspective, made it onto the final pages of Lake Child. Following our visit to Norway, I felt so much as though I belonged there, that the first thing I did on my return to England was to send off for a DNA test. I’m pleased to report that it returned with a very satisfying 9% Norwegian!
Lake Child by Isabel Ashdown is out 19th September (published by Trapeze, £7.99)