The Truth About You, Me and Us

Travel Guide

Bolton, Lancashire

Kate’s personal tour:

The story begins when the heroine, Helen, dashes through the Saturday bustle of a faded mill town in Lancashire, spooked by the possible sighting of a figure from her past. She finds sanctuary in St Andrew’s, a former church converted into a craft gallery, where she has a needlecraft shop.

The inspiration for St Andrew’s came from St George’s Craft Centre in Bolton, a place I often used to visit.  Built in the 1790s, the church was used as a place of worship until 1975, and it was later leased to the council and became a craft centre, housing a café and shops selling paintings, jewellery, and needlework supplies amongst other things. It was a great place for a quiet browse, and for Christmas shopping, and it was a huge disappointment when it closed.

In many ways, Bolton is an unlikely place to have inspired anything: it’s no longer the popular market town it once was, and is probably the sort of place that fosters the idea that it’s ‘grim up north’. Yet there’s beauty if you look for it. Within a short drive of the town centre, there are three fascinating old houses to visit: Smithills Hall, Hall i’th’Wood, and Turton Tower. There are also beautiful country parks and reservoirs to walk round.

I don’t plan my books in depth, and it’s always interesting at the end to see how details and places that have featured in my life creep in. In The Truth About You, Me and Us, Daniel’s family live in Knutsford, a lovely town in Cheshire where I once spent a summer holiday on work experience. The christening scene takes place at a church exactly like one I once attended for a christening, where the church hall stood amongst the graves. Helen goes to view a house to rent and is told that cows parade down the lane in front of it, going from farm to field – which is just what happens outside my own house. I love the way that a book can be a scrapbook of the author’s life