Honestly, it really happened!

I’m sure many writers use experiences they have actually had and play with them and manipulate and change them and then pop them into their novels. I found myself doing this today… I’m writing another novel about Thomas Radwinter, an amateur genealogist who manages to get involved with all sorts of strange ‘cases’; he narrates his ‘adventures’ and ‘investigations’,  as well as chronicling his own life.

I wrote this morning about an encounter he has while waiting for his wife who has gone to buy their little girl some new shoes:

I was smiling to myself as I stood with the twins waiting for Kylie and Cassie.
“Hello, Thomas.”
I glanced round and a short dumpy woman was addressing me… she looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place her… was she someone I’d been to school with? Or someone I’d worked with when I was at the solicitors… I replied politely.
“Hello… how are you?”
“I’m fine… and you?” she looked down at the twins who, bless them, were snoring their socks off… not literally, they weren’t snoring and their little feet were snuggly inside their babygro’s…
“Um… yes, yes… all well…” good grief, who was she, I was really struggling here… dark hair, pale face, glasses…
Luckily Kylie was striding towards me, Cassie on her hip waving a shoe at me. Kylie would know who this was.
“Is that Kylie?” asked the woman in great surprise… so she was obviously someone from BK, Before Kylie. I’d only just said ‘yes’ when the woman said goodbye and hurried towards the lift to the carpark. We always park in the outside carpark in an area destined to be a multi-plex or something. One of my favourite pubs is there and if we didn’t have the children I might have treated my wife to lunch.
“What did she want?” Kylie asked, rather fiercely I thought.
“She was just saying hello… do you know her?”
Kylie gaped at me as Cassie was stretching out, shouting ‘Shoe! Shoe! New shoe!’ !
“Do I know her? Are you serious, Thomas?”
I took Cassie and admired her new shoes, no doubt bought at bargain price – Kylie is a wizard for saving money and getting bargains.
“Well, she looked vaguely familiar…”
I really though Kylie’s eyes were going to pop out of her head, and then she began to laugh at my perplexion… is there such a word?
“You really don’t know who you were talking to?” she asked between shrieks of hilarity.
“Well, no.. she said hello, I said hello, she asked how I was and I said ok and she said she was ok, then she asked if you were you… well, obviously you are you, but she seemed surprised to see you…”
“It was Rebecca!”
“Rebecca who?” Do I know any Rebecca’s? There was a girl in my class at school…
“Your ex…”
“My ex what?”
She had to walk away for a moment to recover herself, she was just in such hysterics… people were looking, but they were smiling… Kylie came back to me… and told me to my great shock and surprise, that the dumpy woman was my ex-wife, Rebecca, my ex-wife!!
Good grief!!! Good grief that it was her and double good grief that I didn’t recognize her… we had been married for nearly ten years and had been together before that… I can’t believe that I didn’t recognize her, good grief!!

An incident very similar to this happened to me when I was first going out with my husband to be, and we met his ex at a festival – he didn’t recognize and it was only later friends told him who she was. My aunty and uncle also had this happen; they were at a wedding and got chatting to a couple, and it became apparent that the woman knew my uncle… after a while he had to ask who she was… his ex-wife!

If you haven’t read any of my Thomas Radwinter books you can find them here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lois%20elsden&sprefix=lois+%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alois%20elsden&oqid=1447527268