Can You Keep a Secret?

Author Q&A

What is your secret vice?

Eating cookies a handful at a time.

What is your favorite time of day?

I love lazy mornings, lying in bed and thinking about the day ahead. But with two small children, I don’t get many of them!

How do you indulge yourself when you need a pick me up?

Head to the shops and buy myself a treat!! Or else I take a long bath with Jo Malone bath oil.

What was your most memorable date (good or bad)?

On my eighteenth birthday I had dinner planned with my (then) boyfriend. We got to the restaurant and a whole bunch of friends were there to surprise me. The relationship didn’t last but I’ll always the remember the party!

What do you appreciate most in your friends?

I appreciate their loyalty, humour and sense of fun.

What woman in history do you admire the most?

Emmeline Pankhurst, who led the suffrage movement. It seems incredible now that women didn’t have the vote, it’s something we all just take for granted. But it wouldn’t have happened without brave women like her.

What was your worst job?

As a financial journalist on the magazine Pensions World, having to write the most boring articles in the world!

What would your theme song be?

‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge. It’s such an upbeat, optimistic song, plus I’m very close to all my family, especially my two sisters.

What is your favorite quote?

‘I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.’ —Oscar Wilde

If you weren’t a writer, what career would you choose?

I studied music and would have loved to have been a singer-songwriter.

What actress would you want to play you in a movie?

Sandra Bullock as she is so funny and human and has long dark hair like me. It would be a very boring movie though as writers basically just sit in front of a computer… and write!

What scene in your own books are you most surprised you wrote?

The entire ending of Shopaholic Ties The Knot— as when I first started writing it I had no idea how I would get Becky out of her mess!


From the Hardcover edition.