Back on the road

In 2019 I made more than 18 trips abroad for work. I went to Montreal and Istanbul, to Helsinki and the Isle of Bute. I went to Hamburg in Germany where the airline lost my luggage and I wore the same outfit for three days running, and Brive in France where I sat in a tent and did 11 hours of signing. I went on trains and ferries, trams and taxis. I flew on transatlantic air buses, and planes so small they had only two seats per row and no overhead luggage. I ate terrible airline food and worried about my carbon footprint, while trying to work out which offset schemes made a difference.

In 2020, my accountant emailed me to make sure I hadn’t left a page off my tax return. I did no travel at all. 

For me the change was abrupt and disorienting. I went from filling out visa waivers and juggling childcare with my very-full-time scientist husband, to a world of zoom, homeschool and constant snacks, while my husband sat on endless conference calls and worked around the clock (did I mention he’s a virologist?). For the first time in a decade, I didn’t deliver a book.

The publicity tour that had been carefully arranged for The Turn of the Key was scrapped – it came out in early April, to a world of closed bookshops and supermarkets more concerned with the availability of toilet paper than novels. We talked hopefully about the possibility of the American tour for One by One still going ahead – but my husband had said right at the beginning of all this that he thought it would be at least two years until a semblance of normality returned, and it looked like he was going to be right.

For years he’d told me to write a pandemic novel. Now suddenly I was living one and it turned out there was a lot more Zoom and panicking about pasta than in Station Eleven. 

In the end that US tour took place in a London hotel room via a laptop. I was irrationally annoyed when one of the “rate my room” twitter accounts dissed “my” décor, and broke my usual Twitter rule of not responding to criticism to indignantly point out that the cushions weren’t actually mine. Nevertheless, cushion criticism aside, it was an unexpected joy. I spoke with Fredrik Bachman and Sophie Hannah, with David Baldacci and Shari Lapena, with shops across the country from Pennysylvania to Arizona. In the UK I did an online murder mystery with authors ranging from Steve Cavanagh to Dorothy Koomson to Lisa Jewell, and invited members of the public to come up on screen and question the suspects. There was a level of intimacy to these events, and an inclusivity that I loved. Many readers told me that they’d never been able to access a book event before – they didn’t live in towns that usually featured on tour schedules, or were housebound, or had other challenges that meant they couldn’t get to talks. 

I am strangely jittery about getting back on the horse. Will I remember how to talk to real-life readers? Will people mind if I wear a mask during signings? And exactly which carbon offset schemes are the best? 

Now, 29 long months on from those first news stories about bat viruses and a weird flu in Italy, it turns out we are indeed getting back to normal. Or a semblance of normal anyway. Contrails cross the sky – and once again I’m filling out a visa waiver form, and checking I still have travel insurance. Because, for the first time in over two years, I have an event abroad. And not just one event. That long-postponed tour for One By One? It’s happening – for my seventh novel, The It Girl. Three weeks in the US, with a flight every morning and an event every evening – followed by two weeks of events and PR in the UK as soon as I get back, with events everywhere from Brighton to Edinburgh. 

I’m both exhilarated and nervous at the prospect. In fact, “nervous” is an understatement. Before my first crime novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, came out, I had a dream that everyone on Twitter hated the book so much that my publicist made me go online to personally apologise to all the people tweeting their disgust. Last night, I dreamt that I was waiting in line at Heathrow and someone came up to me to tell me that I had tested Covid positive, and would have to be escorted from the airport. In my nightmare I was dragged from the line by people in hazmat suits, while everyone looked at me in horror. It wasn’t quite the Cersei Lannister walk of shame from Game of Thrones, but it was the authorly equivalent. I’m fairly sure that won’t be happening – but I am strangely jittery about getting back on the horse. Will I remember how to talk to real-life readers? Will people mind if I wear a mask during signings? And exactly which carbon offset schemes are the best? 

To compensate, I’m focusing on the small stuff. I’m ordering travel size toothpaste (I’ve learned from that German experience never to put all your toiletries – or your speaking outfits – in one basket) and googling for N95 masks that match my clothes. And I’m also reminding myself that of the few good things that did come out of all of this – aside from our new-found respect for vaccines, and the fact that when I say my husband’s a virologist, people no longer ask “what?” – one small but important thing is that a good chunk of the events on my schedule are now hybrid, online and in person. Because all those readers who attended their first author event in lockdown – I hope it’s not their last. That’s one aspect of “normality” I don’t want to see return.

But the thing that’s most on my mind? How good it will be to meet readers face-to-face again, and how much I’m looking forward to talking to booksellers, whose endless creativity and perseverance is part of what got us all through the last two years. I’m even looking forward to the airline food… maybe.