I’ve come to realise that it’s only when I arrive at the end of a first draft, that I can ever really know how the story needs to start. Achieving some kind of circularity in a novel where the finale mirrors the beginning, even in a tiny, nuanced way, is a satisfying form of closure both to a writer and reader – but for me, writing as a pantser, it’s impossible for me to plan this sort of thing in advance. I tend to finish a draft, think ‘Ahh! So that’s what the story is!’ – and then return to the beginning in order to retrofit a completely new opening that best suits the narrative. And so it proved with my latest novel, The Best Days of Our Lives: the elevenpage prologue that starts the novel wasn’t written until after I’d clocked up 110,000 other words, including everyone’s favourite two ‘The End’. Only then was my story in place.
The first line
