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I don’t start my books with an idea; I start them with a feeling, knowing that there’s something I’d like to evoke – all the ideas and the questions that follow develop from that.

When I started writing A sister’s Gift, I had so many elements I wanted to put in that I hardly knew where I was going to begin.  I remember as a kid walking  into the local dress-maker’s shop and begging  them for their out-of-date samples and swatches. With all those little snippets and cuttings from the dress-makers floor and armed with hoarded sequins and some  beautiful buttons I imagined all the  beautiful dolls’ clothes I could make.  I felt pretty much the same way emerging from  a coffee-shop in Victoria station some months back now having spent an intense hour throwing ideas around with my editor Maxine; I felt the same anticipation and excitement at the prospect of creating something new. I was a child again with all those sequins and feathers and buttons and no idea what I was going to do with them other than knowing I wanted to  create something wonderful!    
The topics of surrogacy and sibling rivalry were there, and I knew I wanted to weave in the historic local Rochester Bridge, and then there was the theme of Charity and a whole load of red helium balloons…  so many things, indeed it  was difficult to know  till I began to write it which of these elements would rise to the surface and which would take a back seat.
In the end it was the theme of sibling rivalry - and love – that emerged as the strongest. It’s a book that asks the question – how is it possible to forgive one of the greatest betrayals of all?  And what better way to complete my ‘trilogy’ on Hope, Faith and Charity than that?