Laura Davis meets a mother who finds writing to be a cathartic experience

IT’S hard not to be envious of Caroline Smailes – an accomplished author, thanks to her blog being discovered by a publishing house, she has a lovely home, a doting husband and three healthy children. And she has just set up a new business.

None of this, however, has come without a lot of hard work and along the way she has been forced to overcome hurdles that now inform her writing.

“I think there are people who talk about doing things and people who just get on with it,” says the mother-of-three

Originally from Newcastle, Caroline was studying for an MPhil at the University of Liverpool when she discovered she was pregnant.

Suddenly finding herself thrown into a lifestyle that was so different from her peers, she struggled to adjust.

“I had to give up my studies and we moved over here to the Wirral,” she explains. “I left all my friends behind.

“I had never held a baby before and he didn’t look like the pictures in the glossy parenting magazines. He cried all the time and my parents weren’t around.

“I missed a year of my eldest child’s life because of post-natal depression.”

Caroline, 35, also had to deal with being separated from her Maltese family, who as strict Catholics disapproved of her becoming an unmarried mother. She has since rebuilt her relationship with her relations.

When it came to writing her latest book, Black Boxes, her own experience of post-natal depression helped Caroline get into the mind of one of her two protagonists.

Ana Lewis is trapped in a spiral of depression that started with the birth of her first child, Pip, and is slowly forcing her towards self-destruction.

Fortunately Caroline’s story is much happier. Her first son Jacob is nearing 10 and has no memory of his mother’s illness. Her second and third pregnancies were much easier.

Black Boxes is dedicated to her three children: “A Promise. For my son. Jacob. For my son. Benjamin. For my daughter. Poppy Elizabeth.”

“It’s my promise to them that their emotional needs are important to me,” explains Caroline, who lives in Little Sutton.

“We are quite open with Jacob about everything. He didn’t suffer as a baby, if anything he was over-loved because I panicked about everything.

“I remember looking at him when he was about a year old and realising how beautiful he was. Things got better after that.”

Caroline’s novel is divided into three parts – the first and last are told from Ana’s viewpoint; fragments of memories and thoughts that make up the “black box” of her life, much as the black box on an aeroplane records details of a flight.

The middle section is Pip’s story, mainly told through diary excerpts.

Severely neglected by her mother, the teenage girl is unable to properly look after herself and her younger brother and is bullied at school.

Caroline again drew on personal experience in creating the character of Pip.

“I was severely bullied at school for looking different because of my Maltese background and I took aspects of my days from that time when I wrote about Pip,” she says.

“There’s a bit in the book when she walks past a fence and someone has written ‘Pip is a fat ugly cow’ on it. That actually happened to me.

“Black Boxes is very much based on aspects of my own life. I didn’t have to do as much research as I have for other books. It was quite a healing process.”

Another important influence in Caroline’s work is her study of linguistics.

This is evident in the structure of the book and it also helped her write the teenager’s diary. She also re-read her own diaries from when she was a similar age to Pip.

The character’s account of being picked on in class is likely to strike a chord with many readers. Witnessing her struggle to carry on with her own life, becoming sexually promiscuous through lack of parental guidance, is a difficult experience.

“I was aware that when teenage girl writes a diary her spelling is likely to be wrong but I was worried that it would detract from the story so instead I took out every apostrophe,” says Caroline.

“I think with the structure of the book I expect a lot of the reader but I think if people appreciate the style of the book then they will really embrace it.”

BLACK BOXES by Caroline Smailes is published by Harper Collins, priced £12.99.

Read Caroline’s blog at www.insearchofadam.blogspot.com

lauradavis