Ali Mercer: Writing My Mother’s Choice

When I was four years old I was knocked off my feet by a wave on a beach in north Cornwall and my dad, who was a strong swimmer, promptly went into the sea to get me out. A couple of years after that my parents separated and then divorced, and I didn’t see all that much of him when I was growing up.

When I got round to asking him about what had happened that day, he brushed it aside. ‘You were just rolling around in a couple of inches of water,’ he told me. It was obvious that he didn’t want what he’d done to be seen as heroic, or anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But maybe he sensed that I did, and still do.

What if he hadn’t fished me out of the sea that day on the beach? What might have happened next? Everybody’s life has its share of might-have-beens and close shaves, times when the line between being safe and not safe becomes so vanishingly thin that it’s possible to glimpse the other side, and that’s one of mine. 

The incident that made a big impression on me even though I don’t remember it – maybe even because I don’t remember it. I remember the aftermath, the shock of being cold and wet through and my family donating spare items of dry clothing for me to put on (which resulted in an unusual outfit, since they were all much bigger than I was). And then I remember going on my dad’s shoulders on the walk back, a treat I was already getting a little too big and heavy for. But I only know the rest of what happened from the other people who were there at the time. And that’s always interesting for a writer, because no two people see an event in the same way, and the space between one version and another is where stories are made.

One of my earliest memories is of my dad teaching me how to swim. He always loved Cornwall, rivers and the sea. When he passed away in 2018, the readings we chose for his funeral reflected his love of open water. When I stood up to read, the land gulls overhead started crying out so loudly it was hard to make myself heard. It was an eerie, haunting sound, and it seemed like a kind of tribute to him. 

The following year, I started work on my new novel, My Mother’s Choice. I had already written about an incident inspired by that day on the beach, and had included it in an early draft of a previous novel, but ended up taking it out. Finally, a reimagined version of the scene found its place at the heart of the new story I was telling. Everything else fell into place around it. 

Dani in My Mother’s Choice is fourteen, and something happened to Laura, her mother, ten years earlier, when Dani was four – the same age I was when I was knocked off my feet by that wave and ended up in the sea. Nobody talks about Laura, and Dani has to turn detective to find out more. Her family has been living through a period of artificial calm after the storm, and Dani’s impulse to make sense of the past destroys that as she sets about uncovering the secrets that have been kept from her.  

When Dani starts casting round for answers to her questions about her mum, she is helped on her way by the discovery of a notebook hidden in her aunt’s attic. What she finds written inside forces her to see the adults in her life in a completely different way, and to challenge them to tell her the truth. I don’t keep a diary or journal any more, but I loved the idea of them as a child – I thought there was something very intriguing about writing something that was meant just for you, so you would be free to confide the truth because you weren’t worrying about what anybody else might think. Everybody knows it can be dangerous to read someone else’s diary, but that’s what Dani ends up doing, with consequences she couldn’t have begun to foresee. 

Readers of my previous books will know that difficulty with communication is a subject close to my heart, and it’s one I’ve learned more about through the experience of bringing up my son, who is autistic. He’s thirteen now, and was diagnosed at the age of four. Language didn’t come easily to him and that’s made me acutely aware of how hard it can be to know what other people are thinking, or feeling.

Because what if they can’t tell you, even if they want to? And if they could tell you… what might you find out? Would you be faced with a choice – to change things, or to just carry on as before? 

My Mother’s Choice is my third novel for Bookouture, and was written fairly rapidly over several months. While I was working on it something extraordinary happened – my previous novel, His Secret Family, became a bestseller, taking the top spot in the Amazon UK Kindle and most-sold fiction chart as well as the UK Bookstats ebook chart. My dad didn’t live to see that happen, but I know he’d have been enormously proud. And who knows, if he hadn’t acted so promptly that day on the beach all those years ago, maybe none of these books would ever have been written. 

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Ali decided she wanted to be a writer early on and wrote her first novel when she was at primary school. She did an English degree and spent her early twenties working in various jobs in journalism, including as a reporter for the showbusiness newspaper The Stage. She started writing fiction in earnest after getting married, moving out of London to the Oxfordshire market town of Abingdon and starting a family.

She has two children, a daughter and a son who is autistic and was diagnosed when he was four years old. Her novels My Mother’s Choice, His Secret Family and Lost Daughter are published by Bookouture and are available in ebook, paperback and audiobook. His Secret Family was a #1 bestseller in the Amazon UK Kindle and most-sold fiction charts and the UK Bookstats ebook chart.

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Twitter @AlisonLMercer

Instagram @alimercerwriter

Facebook www.facebook.com/AliMercerwriter

Website: https://alimercerwriter.com

MY MOTHER’S CHOICE

I’d always thought they kept quiet about her because they were sad. But what if it was because they were guilty?

I watch them at the school gates, all the mothers with their daughters. I see the hugs and all those thoughtful little adjustments to scarves and ponytails. How their love seems to overflow, they have so much of it to give.

And then I walk home to my aunt’s cold house, where there are a hundred rules for me to follow and only a single photograph of my mother to look at.

She is never spoken about in this house. They tell me that it will be easier if I don’t think about her.

It is strange though, isn’t it? That I know nothing about my own mother?

But they don’t know about the diary I’ve found up in the loft. Maybe they even forgot it was there. It doesn’t matter anymore if they won’t tell me anything. Because within these pages is what I’ve waited fourteen years to find out. And maybe some things I wish I could forget.

All I wanted was to bring our family closer together, but could what I find tear us apart instead?

A heart-breaking and powerful novel about family secrets and how we live with decisions we never thought we would have to make. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Kate Hewitt and Amanda Prowse.

Buy links for My Mother’s Choice

Amazon: https://geni.us/B086T61VF1Cover

Apple: https://apple.co/2wk3G9Z

Kobo: https://bit.ly/2xdGeMb

Googleplay: https://bit.ly/2UVLTjb

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Category: On Writing