In Barefoot on the Cobbles Torre Station in Torquay is both a gateway and a meeting point. It is here that Daisy alights to begin her new life. It is here that the many wounded soldiers arrived for transfer to the hospitals and nursing homes of Torquay; in this way it is where Daisy’s world collides with the horrors of the Western Front. Torre Station is also where Polly passes through on her way to confront her feelings for her daughter.

I studied the early twentieth century railway network, to try to get details of Polly’s journey to Torquay correct. I even used genuine train times, although I suspect that these may have been disrupted by the needs of the war. I was writing about an era when the railway was the predominant means of transport. So it was important that there should be train journeys in the novel. The journeys I describe were taken in real life and would have been lifechanging for the characters that undertook them.

‘Torre Station was small, more like Barnstaple but it still pulsed with hectic life, hypnotising Polly into inaction. Reminders of the war were ever-present. Each person carried with them the scars of the past four years; the age had marked them all. Anonymous, khaki-clad Tommies, with their old men’s unfathomable eyes staring from the bodies of boys. Bold young women, their shorter hem-lines and bobbed hair, reflecting a new freedom.’  

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.