WHAT KATIE DID (and what she definitely shouldn’t have done…)
WHAT KATIE DID
(and what she definitely shouldn’t have done…)
The protagonist in my latest book, The Bad Wife, is a woman who becomes obsessed by a stranger. She knows nothing about this man, but meets him when she’s at a low point in her life and starts to fantasise about being in a relationship with him. Unable to get him out of her head, she begins to worm her way into his life – with devastating consequences for both of them.
When I created Katie, I had no idea how far she would go to get what she wanted. My starting point for the book was the idea of a woman falling in love with a stranger: unrequited love. At that stage, I was a pantser – I didn’t plot or plan any of this novel, I started writing and let the story emerge as I went along. And boy, did Katie get up to some bad stuff.
Just recently – and many years after writing the first draft of this book – I have discovered there is an actual condition, called Limerence, which perfectly fits Katie’s state of mind. Limerence is a love addiction whereby the limerent idolizes the object of their affection and can think about nothing else. He or she experiences extreme mood swings: euphoria when they think they stand a chance of making the other person love them in return, despair if not.
Katie goes through these sorts of emotional highs and lows, and one of the things I wanted to do when telling her story was show that love – even unrequited love from afar – is a very powerful thing. You don’t have to be suffering from a medically diagnosed condition to fall in love with someone to such an extent that, even though you know little about them, you start to wonder what your world would be like if they were part of it. Falling for a stranger is more about falling in love with an ideal – you have little knowledge about that person’s personality or the way they live their life, so you don’t even know if the two of you would get on – but it’s enough to start a mental process: imagining the two of you together, creating scenarios where you’re introducing him or her to your friends, doing normal mundane things – shopping, watching TV – or more exciting stuff like holidaying in the Maldives. From there, it’s really not a huge step to the next stage in this fantasy: where you almost start to believe in the possibility that the two of you might get into a relationship and that the other person will love you back.
Katie’s obsessive behaviour isn’t something that can be justified, nor is the way she tries to involve herself in the lives of Joe and his girlfriend. But it’s not an illness. Her obsession is driven by other circumstances in her life: overwhelming grief for her dead mother, frustration at the behaviour of her self-centred children, depression at being in a marriage where all the love seems to have melted away. It doesn’t help that she’s stuck in a dead-end job and – probably most relevant of all – that she’s in her early forties and heading towards the dreaded menopause. Thankfully we know so much more about this than we did a few decades ago, and the impact it can have on women is not only researched and documented, but also acknowledged by more than just the professionals who study it. In the 21st century, we are all too aware that the menopause can affect women’s mental and physical wellbeing – along with their behaviour – in ways which can be disruptive and overwhelming.
Having said that, it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for outlandish behaviour, and I’m certainly not trying to defend what Katie did. But I hope that in The Bad Wife I show she’s a woman who’s feeling under fire from all sides – even the people who should love her and care about her the most, don’t appear to be looking out for her. So, take all those factors into consideration – grief, depression, hormones – and you’ve got a fairly volatile emotional cocktail waiting to explode on the page.
It would be awful to be the person living through this nightmare but, as an author, it’s fantastic material. People don’t always behave well, domestic life is rarely perfect and dysfunctional families don’t have to be weird or disturbing: we’re all dysfunctional to some extent, and one person’s normal is another’s deviant. But I love writing about humanity in all its forms – good, bad, happy, sad, mean, kind, hateful, loving. One of the best things about being a writer is that you can create a cast of characters and a set of circumstances, stir it all up with a generous helping of plot, then throw a bomb or two into the mix and wait to see what happens. It’s the ultimate power play.
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The Bad Wife is published by Bloodhound Books on 29th June and currently available to preorder available through Amazon.
Sarah Edghill worked as a journalist for many years, before turning to fiction. She has been short-listed in several short story and novel competitions and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, three (mostly grown-up) children and far too many animals. Her debut novel, A Thousand Tiny Disappointments, was published in September 2021 and her second novel, His Other Woman, followed in May 2022 and was a Kindle Best Seller.
T – @Edghillsarah
I – sarah.edghill
FB – Sarah Edghill Author
THE BAD WIFE
A married woman’s lust for a stranger compels her to risk everything, in this new suspense by the bestselling author of His Other Woman.
It’s just a small picture in the local paper—Katie can’t explain why it sets her heart racing. But hiding the photo of local GP Joe Harvey in her bag sets in motion a chain of events that will dramatically alter her life forever.
Driven by a unhealthy desire for a man she hardly knows, the mother of two begins to worm her way into Joe’s life, knowing it’s reckless but still unable to control herself. As her obsession intensifies, Katie’s world becomes increasingly stressful and she’s forced to cover her tracks by lying to everyone around her. Katie’s dancing with danger, and there will be consequences. And while she can’t live without him, Joe barely knows she exists . . . yet.
BUY HERE
Category: On Writing
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