For The Housemaid's Daughter, my publisher's artists produced a stunning image of a white woman leading a black child through the arid Karoo region of South Africa. Just visible, is a backdrop I was keen to include: the subtle 'watermark' of a musical score - music being the vital connection between the Irish matriarch, Cath, and Ada, the child she leads by the hand. My editor devised the captivating subtitle:
An epic journey, An uncertain love,
An enduring friendship.
And it seemed we had found a theme that would animate all of my subsequent novels: a young woman, pictured from the rear. In The Girl from Simon's Bay, she stands alone above Simon's Town, the naval base at the heart of the story, wondering where life will take her, and what she can do to influence its passage.
Sometimes David surprises me... in the passing slide of blue eyes, or the line of a warship slicing across the bay...
I returned to a Karoo setting for The Fire Portrait, which depicts Frances, the heroine, facing a sunset whose colours she uses in her work - and which also evoke the fire that will upend her world and yet lead her on a journey she might never have imagined. Art was her refuge - and it becomes her triumph.
My paintings reflect more than their surface images. They show the passage of drought, fire, flood and war...
In my latest novel, The Case Against Fili Du Bois, Fili is shown running through the vines against a mountainous backdrop in the French-heritage winelands of the Cape. Running away from danger, running towards it? Can she find her place in this beautiful valley, despite the suspicions of those around her? The subtitle hints at the challenge:
A stray child, an unsolved crime, a precious legacy...