Authors Interviewing Characters: Frankie Chase

BAD WINNER

Bad Winner is an epic, unsettling and darkly comic adventure thriller set between a stifling England and the wilds of Colombia.

Black sheep Bea craves freedom as much as her populist dad craves power. Intent on estranging her bigoted family, Bea’s embroiled herself in debt working a dead-end job planning competition prizes, gambling and drinking to forget. She whiles away the hours daydreaming, sparring with sociopathic brother Jonathan, a luxury masculine lifestyle blogger, and winning petty rebellions against boyfriend ‘Gray Ham’, a finance man with all Daddy’s aspirations but none of his charisma.

As the general election looms larger, pressure begins to mount, because Bea’s family rely on her silence to keep ruinous secrets buried. So when a particularly strong dose of escapism catapults her to Colombia, she crash-lands in real danger, Jonathan hot on her heels.

Sobering up alongside stranger and partner-in-crime Marcel, she’s dragged kicking and screaming across the bumpy terrain of self-discovery. The body count rises as her battle for freedom becomes a bloody fight for survival, then a furious race for revenge.

Frankie Chase interviews her protagonist, Bea Scrooge

My protagonist learnt to be reticent. Her acerbic narration is part of the ploy – underneath her frank, cynical reactions to the everyday lurk dark thoughts and ruinous secrets. It takes a whole novel to uncover them! So, to catch Bea at her most cooperative, I had to interview her in a specific situation.

I find Bea emptying her purse into the hands of a sighing barman, a large glass of white wine glistening on the beer mat between them. I feel a pang of guilt for the monster I’ve created and a flutter of nerves at the prospect of direct conversation – after years playing God behind the scenes.

The barman grimaces; I follow his gaze to find a tampon among the heap of coins in his hands.

‘Oh,’ says Bea, snatching it back. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t used it. Look – plastic wrap – see?’ She holds up the little white bullet, then she points it at the coins. ‘That’s enough, right?’

The barman doesn’t respond. His mouth moves as he counts, then he shakes his head. ‘You’re still short.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ok, well, do you want to pour back 20p’s worth or whatever and I’ll take the rest?’

‘I’ll get this,’ I cut in.

Both parties turn their frowns on me and my heart begins to thump. Bea looks me up and down, eyebrows knitted over hazy desperation. ‘Really? Why?’

I take a deep breath. ‘Similar thing happened to me the other day,’ I lie. ‘I left my wallet at home and someone helped me out.’

A few moments pass while her addled mind computes this, then she nods – I needn’t have worried. The draw of the wine was always going to overpower any suspicion she might have had about a gentle stranger’s kindness. ‘Thanks,’ she mutters and takes a glug.

‘Mind if I join you?’ I ask. ‘My mate has just stood me up. In fact,’ I say, sensing if I don’t pounce now I’ll lose her. ‘I have tickets to a club opening tonight. You probably have plans, but there’s a free bar–’

‘I don’t have plans,’ Bea states, suddenly alert.

‘Ok… so you’ll be my plus-one?’

‘Sure!’ Bea zips her coins and tampon back into her purse while I pay the barman. She finishes the wine in two long glugs and collects her array of totes. ‘Where are we going then?’

‘Follow me.’

We walk single-file in silence for a minute till the pavement widens. Conscious we’re entering a dark, quiet area, I drop back so we’re side-by-side and joke, ‘Didn’t your parents warn you not to take sweets from strangers?’

She laughs. ‘No, they didn’t.’

‘Really?’

‘They actively encouraged it.’ she says.

‘You’re being sarcastic,’ I say. ‘Right?’

Bea shakes her head. ‘Let’s just say they had a surplus of children.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘For religious reasons? Or just horny and careless?’

Bea snorts out a laugh. ‘No. Very deliberate and pronatalist. Fighting the future extinction of the whites!’ She tugs at a white blonde ringlet.

‘Oh wow,’ I feign. ‘So they’re…’

‘Neo-Nazis? Basically. Are you going to un-invite me to your party now?’

I cringe, knowing she’ll regret this drunken dribble of candour. ‘You’re giving black sheep energy,’ I say, my tone warm and reassuring. ‘Something about drinking alone, broke. Trying to pay barmen with tampons.’

‘A woman’s currency,’ she grins.

‘I guess your parents will be voting UKF then,’ I probe.

Bea extracts a labelless clear-plastic bottle from a tote and unscrews the cap. A sip contorts her face into a scowl. 

‘What do you think about them?’ I persist.

‘FUK Freedom?’ She uses the derogatory name her dad’s opponents have commandeered for his bigoted party. ‘They’re shit,’ she says.

 ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But I can see the appeal in a weird way. I mean, obviously I hate everything they stand for, but people are busy and lazy. They don’t want to have to learn about politics to make decisions like Brexit – and Scrooge is promising to take that burden of responsibility away. Like, here are my values – if they align with yours, let me use my knowledge to make the right political decisions. Right?’

Bea pours the last of the bottle’s contents into her mouth and swills it around before swallowing; she suppresses a heave, emits a tiny burp and stuffs the bottle back into a tote. 

‘Dangerous, don’t you think?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t do politics,’ she dismisses, and punctuates by pulling her phone from her bag. I’m not surprised – my troubled protagonist went to the lengths of darkening her hair and obscuring her accent when her dad first stepped into the limelight, so even the promise of a free bar was unlikely to provoke a disclosure. I peer over and read her screen, which displays seven missed calls from Gray Ham. ‘Who’s that?’ I ask.

‘Oh, just my nagging boyfriend. I’ve probably put the lid back on the fizzy water wrong, or some other heinous crime.’

‘Outrageous,’ I say. ‘It’ll go flat.’

‘Oh, stop.’

‘Do you need to tell him where you’re going though? In case I turn out to be some psycho.’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ she says, and she smiles – to herself, not to me. She makes an attempt to extract something furry from a tangled mass of wires in one of the totes, but huffs and gives up; she pulls her cardigan tightly around her ribs. ‘Do we need to get a bus?’ she asks. ‘It’s freezing.’

‘We’re almost there,’ I say. ‘It will be worth it, I promise.’

Bea looks up at the high rises looming over us. ‘Weird place to open a club,’ she mutters. Her phone begins to buzz; I see it’s flashing with the words Gray Ham.

‘He really wants to chat, doesn’t he? I don’t mind if you need to answer.’

‘I don’t need to answer.’ She rejects the call, turns the phone off and puts it back in her bag. ‘Have you got any cigarettes?’

I hand her the pack I bought for this purpose. ‘Is he a bit… over-protective?’ I ask.

‘Over-protective makes him sound like a nice parent.’

‘Controlling?’

‘He’d like to be. It’s hard to control someone who doesn’t give a shit.’

‘Oh dear,’ I say. ‘Sounds like it’s over.’

‘Honestly, it never began.’ She hands the packet back and pauses to light her cigarette.

I linger. ‘Don’t you think the FUK Freedom thing is a bit like an old-fashioned marriage?’ I muse, trying another angle. ‘Like, let the man make the big decisions and the woman is free to focus on… well, housework and beauty, I guess. Do you know what I mean?’

She exhales a long, white breath into the cold night air. ‘I don’t. I think you should probably stop worrying about it and just enjoy your night.’

It was worth a try. ‘I just find the freedom-power dynamic fascinating. Have you ever been in love?’ I ask.

‘What a question! No.’

‘Would you like to be?’

‘Erm, no. I actually think that would be worse than an old-fashioned marriage.’

‘Really? How?’ I laugh.

‘Well, love makes you weak, right? You actually give a shit. I think the greatest power is genuine disinterest.’

‘I see,’ I say. ‘Interesting.’

‘I guess I see love as a basic human function, like shitting and eating, in that it makes people giddy and moronic enough to make babies.’

‘So you resist love?’

‘Haven’t had to so far. Maybe I’m immune. You?’

‘I’m in the giddy and moronic category.’

She nods. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I say, ‘but you seem to like being out-of-control drunk. Am I right? So how is that any better?’

Bea raises her eyebrows and tuts at me but allows herself to laugh. ‘Erm, no you’re not right – I drink to make things interesting. I don’t think I’m ever out of control.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I guess I just medicate the apathy.’

‘I see.’ I nod. I notice she’s eyeing me suspiciously, so I switch back to small talk: ‘What do you do for work?’ I ask.

‘I design competition prizes.’

‘That sounds fun.’

‘Yeah, if you like pouring your soul into selling a pack of biscuits. Spending your days in a barely converted warehouse that lets in the cold and wet but keeps out the light.’

‘You sound like you need a holiday.’

‘I need more than a holiday. I need a new life.’

I smile knowingly. ‘Maybe start with some winter sun. Or a therapist.’

‘Don’t even…’ she trails off. ‘Seriously, how much further is it? Do you actually know where you’re going?’

Bea’s patience was always going to run out on this cold, dark walk to nowhere. There will be no party – I’d lose her immediately once inside. I decide it’s now or never to pose the question that inspired me to write her into a novel. ‘Do you think you’re a good person?’ I ask.

She frowns, sucks hard on her cigarette.

‘Your parents clearly aren’t, so presumably neither nature nor nurture is on your side. You reject their ethos. But why is that? Is it because you’ve somehow developed a strong moral compass? Do you think for yourself and judge them to be wrong, or are you just rebelling? Using the spirit and contrary nature that you inherited, turning it against them?’ I watch her features twist till she looks like she might be about to vomit or pass out. I worry for a second she might hit me.

‘Who are you? The Ghost of bloody Christmas Past, or what?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m just fascinated by morality and family dynamics, and your set-up is pretty extreme.’

She looks me up and down, takes a breath, and spits, ‘You’re a journalist, aren’t you? I should have known.’ She shakes her head, trembling with rage now. She throws her cigarette at my chest and runs off. 

—

Frankie’s career began writing competition copy in a damp warehouse. The prizes she pitched were so alluring – and the mould so intoxicating – that she booked herself an indefinite holiday. When the money ran out, Frankie joined a jungle cult and helped refugees sell woven goods. She found serenity here amidst the monsoon, then she lost it chasing a volatile romance across South America. Now in Bristol with her partner, son and cats, Frankie gets her escapism fix writing thrillers.

BAD WINNER is out now; you can find the Ebook here; UK-based readers can grab a paperback here.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing