1. With the rise of divorce rates over the past few decades, the concept of ‘the Other Family’ has become a reality for many families. Was the inspiration for writing this story based on a real family unit?
Yes and no. I didn't have a specific family or situation in mind, but more a sort of amalgam of elements of real situations that I'd noticed, or come across over the last few years. So it's a patchwork of lots of bits of real life, but not a wholesale transfer of one family or story, to the page - which I would never do!

2. Although Margaret and Richie have led separate lives for over twenty years they remain married on paper. Why do you think Richie has kept this link to his past and not moved forward with marriage to Chrissie?
I try and explain that a bit in the book. Richie was from a society in the North East, and a generation, which had very firm ideas indeed about what was morally and socially acceptable, and respectable - and what was definitely not..But although he adhered to his roots , there was more to his reluctance to divorce Margaret than that, which was that he really never had anything against her.He was flattered by Chrissie, and all she promised, and seduced by the vision of southern success that she offered, but he never turned against Margaret in the process. You could accuse him of emotional idleness - and you'd be right! He was very charming... but very lazy in lots of ways too - would he ever have stirred himself to amplify his career without Chrissie's energy, I wonder?

3. Would Richie and Chrissie’s relationship have been any different if he had pursued a divorce from his first wife and in what way?
It would certainly have been different. Chrissie would have briefly felt more secure, but then she would have had to cope with Richie's possible resentment that she had pushed him into something he didn't really want to do...

4. Amy, the youngest daughter appears to accept the concept of another family, and is the first to make contact with them. In contrast her mother and older sisters appear hostile and in denial, to their existence. Do you think that it’s her age or position in the family that makes her more accepting?
I think Amy is the most intelligent of the sisters, and was - maybe in consequence - not so dependant on her father for reassurance of her value. Her intelligence makes her able to think round the situation that follows Richie's death, rather than just react emotionally and personally, and also distances her a little from Tamsin and Dilly. I think her mind has more to do with her response than her being the youngest, which might have made her more of a baby, as it often does in real life.

5. There appears to be an immediate bond between Amy and her half brother - how do you explain this?
The immediate bond between Amy and Scott occurs, I think, for several reasons. They are both musical, they both feel they are slight outsiders, they are both prepared not to regard the other family as an automatic enemy, they both feel very let down by Richie - Scott because he was abandoned, Amy because her father let her believe he had married her mother. Also, Scott wants to save another child of his father's from suffering the same pain, and Amy is longing for a future which is linked to her upbringing but also something new.

6. What is the significance of the piano being left to Margaret in Richie’s will?
I think the piano is an, "I'm sorry..."

7. What actions does Chrissie have to put in place to move on with her life?
Basically, I think she has to start doing things for herself, rather than always in relation to other people - such as Richie and the girls. When she makes the speech about living separately to Tamsin and Dilly, she is not being a bad mother, but saying - as she had tried to say when Richie was still alive - that they will all live better themselves, and as a unit, if they lead independent lives. And she knows she has to do this herself, first of all, hence taking the flat, and a job which she is over qualified for, as a first step to being reconciled to being herself, at last.

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