Nobody ever found out what happened to Laika Martenwood, the girl who vanished without a trace on her way to school one morning. But for her sister Willa, life shattered into tiny pieces that day, and she has never been able to put them back together again.
Willa sees Laika everywhere: on buses, at parties, in busy streets. It’s been twenty-five years, and the only thing that has kept her going is her belief that her sister is alive, somewhere.
But when a dinner party conversation about childhood memories spirals out of control, a shattering revelation from one of the guests forces Willa to rethink everything she thought she knew about her past. And, out of the debris of that explosive evening, the truth of what really happened begins to emerge. Piece by piece
Writing and painting have always been my two great loves. My third is travel. I studied English and Fine Art at university and, on graduating, signed up for the Teachers for Botswana Recruitment Scheme where I was lucky enough to be posted to Maun, a village on the edge of the Okavango Delta, a vast wilderness full of extraordinary wildlife. I lived in a rondavel, bought a bicycle, adopted some stray animals, and was never happier. I’ve always been drawn to wild and beautiful places, and now live with my husband and dogs on Exmoor, where the watery skies and constantly changing colours of the landscape are a constant source of inspiration for me. Here we are surrounded by open moorland, steep wooded combes, wild ponies and a dramatic ragged coastline. In my debut novel, Things Don’t Break On Their Own, Exmoor is very much the setting for Robyn’s family home.
Things Don’t Break On Their Own was born from a single line about a dinner party scribbled in the back of my 2020 diary, and I began writing the story in earnest in January 2021. It was a joy. I was waking up at four or five in the morning with lines of dialogue or even entire scenes pummelling round my head, and, unable to sleep, I would creep downstairs to write while the rest of the household slept. I did have company: my beloved ancient lurcher, Siddley, who stayed by my side from the very first word to the last.
