Inspiration and Source Material

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The story behind the writing of Crossed Bones:

A family legend tells how in the 17th century a female ancestress was stolen out of a Cornish church by Barbary pirates and sold into the North African white slave trade. I didn't believe a word of it, but when Giles Milton's White Gold came out in 2004 he mentioned a raid on Penzance in 1625. It seemed the extraordinary story was true! What a great novel it would make, I thought – so off I went to Morocco to research it.

The only person free to accompany me was my climbing partner, Bruce: my bribe to him was to go climbing once I had completed my research in Rabat-Salé. After my research trip we headed to Tafraout, a remote Berber village in the foothills of the Anti-Atlas Mountains. It rained as soon as we got there, for 3 days straight. I wrote up notes and searched for good 'faces' for the novel. "That's my Barbary pirate chief," I told Bruce when we entered a restaurant in the village and met the striking proprietor, Abdel Bakrim, arrayed in his traditional turban and robes.

At last the weather cleared and we headed for the famous Lion's Head, which boasts a particularly difficult 1500 metre climb right up the centre of the face. We hadn't reckoned on the effects of the weather; avoiding waterfalls and mudslides took a lot longer than we had planned. Eventually, the light failed. There was snow on the summit, and way down in the dark. We had only the clothes on our backs and no choice: we were benighted.

Night in the mountains of Morocco is extremely cold, and this was February: we were soon feeling the early effects of hypothermia. At last, I phoned the restaurant, the only local number I had. I reached Abdel and asked him to let everyone know we were ok, but stuck on the mountain. He was horrified and said he would round up friends and come and help us. I thanked him, but explained that given our position (halfway up a sheer rockface scalable only by experts, in the light) this would be impossible. He spent the night pacing up and down, watching the mountain, sending up prayers for our protection.

It was impossible to sleep: the ledge was small and precarious, and it was freezing. I thought about my job in publishing, London, meetings, sales conferences etc, and it all seemed rather distant and pointless. I vowed that if I survived I would write the novel, quit full-time publishing and make a new life for myself. I didn't know exactly what that would entail, but the face of my 'pirate chief' kept floating through my waking dreams all that long night.

The next day as soon as the sun rose we made our way down, making rappels with frozen hands into bottomless gorges, never able to see as far as the end of the rope. It took 5 exhausting hours to pioneer an escape route down a previously unclimbed gully. We met Abdel and a group of well-wishers making their way up towards us.

A year later, I married my 'pirate chief'. Bruce and my publishing team came to our wedding in Morocco. I still work for HarperCollins as Fiction Publishing Director, but for part of the year it is remotely, from a Berber village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, which is where I wrote Crossed Bones.