‘Behind the Canvas’ begins with Sadie, the wife whose marriage has just fallen apart. I hope the following interviews will give you a greater understanding of her character.
Interview 1 – Dr. Cox 
Interviewer: Dr Cox , I understand you first met Sadie when you were both children?
Dr Cox: Well, yes, I suppose so. Her mother was a receptionist at my father’s GP surgery and when I was in my teens she was still in junior school. I didn’t know her very well though, she was just a kid. I suppose I became more aware of her when she was about fifteen and I was a medical student helping out my father during the holidays. Just admin and stuff.
Interviewer: Ah, so what can you tell me about her?
Dr Cox: She was very quiet, but friendly. She would come to the surgery after school and make cups of tea for us all in the kitchen. Then she would settle down and make a start on homework until her mother finished work.
Interviewer: She was a good student then? Did she have many friends?
Dr Cox: I don’t know anything about her friends. She and her mother were very close. I quite envied her as I never felt that close to either of my parents. Her dad had walked out on them a few years earlier and left them in dire straits, according to my father. I imagine that brought them together. It was lovely to see how affectionate they were. Sadie was always gentle and kind and would do anything for anybody. Very like her mother. She took great care of her mother throughout her illness, couldn’t do enough for her. It was such a tragedy, a young girl like Sadie being totally on her own, no family at all. My father always said she was wise beyond her years, very independent, but somehow also needy. She’d had to grow up fast and take control of her life in a way that most eighteen-year-olds never had to.
Interviewer: Did you ever see her after her mother died?
Dr Cox: No. But she kept in touch with my father for some years. She felt indebted to him for passing on my old car to her after I went abroad. I understand she drove her mother all over the place in it in the months before she died. She went off to uni and I often wondered what became of her. My father said she married someone and then contact petered out. He was a bit concerned. He felt she might be rather vulnerable. Sorry, I can’t tell you much more than that.
Interview 2 – Hazel Fergusson
Interviewer: You were at university with Sadie, is that correct?
Hazel: Yes, that’s correct. Good grief – that was years ago now! More than thirty years! We met on our first day there and became very close friends. Until she met Mike, that is.
Interviewer: Oh. And what happened then?
Hazel: I guess we drifted apart. I was seeing someone too and we didn’t seem to have the same amount of time for each other anymore. We shared a house in our second and third years but scarcely saw each other after she met Mike. We both had finals too so were studying pretty hard.
Interviewer: Did she seem happy? What did you think of Mike?
Hazel: Oh, she was totally in love with him. And he with her, I would say. He admired everything about her and they were inseparable. Sadie had no family at all, she was all alone in the world and I did worry that she was jumping into a relationship with Mike too quickly, for the sake of security. She was definitely a people-pleaser and more than anything she wanted a family around her. I personally felt that, unlike me, she hadn’t had enough experience of men to make such an important decision in her life. She’d never even had a boyfriend before uni. I tried talking to her, but she was set on Mike and I had to respect that.
Interviewer: Did you see her much after university?
Hazel: Yes, for the first year and a bit. She was still studying – some sort of art course – and working part-time and they’d found a gorgeous little cottage. I went to a few parties there. She was a great cook and always a lot of fun. She was the happiest I’d ever seen her! Mike seemed nice but I saw another side of him now and again. There was something odd, secretive about him… and I could never work out why I didn’t trust him entirely. Anyway, I lost touch after I moved to New York; I was offered a fabulous job there and met my husband soon after so I haven’t been back to the UK much since my parents passed away.
Interview 3 – Brian Phelps
Interviewer: So, Mr Phelps, how did you know Sadie?
Brian: Oh please, call me Brian. Well, Sadie and I grew up together. We were next-door neighbours, semi-detached, and our parents were friends. There was a hole in the hedge between our back gardens and we used to sit in this sort of cave and have secrets. What do you want to know about her?
Interviewer: How old was she when you first met?
Brian: About zero probably! We were babies together. I don’t remember a time before Sadie. Our mothers would walk us together in our pushchairs to the park, we treated each other’s houses as our own. I don’t reckon our parents ever had any babysitting problems! But they moved away when I was about twelve, or maybe thirteen – I think I’d done about a year in high school – and although our mothers kept in touch, I never saw Sadie again.
Interviewer: Why did they move away?
Brian: I remember my parents talking about it, and going silent when I walked into the room. Her father, Dave, just disappeared one day, just didn’t come home from work. There were police visits now and again and in the end, after a couple of months, Sadie and her mother moved away. It was years before my parents told me what really happened.
Interviewer: So what did happen?
Brian: Apparently Dave had another woman somewhere else – had had for years. My dad sort of knew about it and didn’t approve, but never spoke of it before Dave left. My mother gave him hell, called him an accomplice, slapped his face. She was very upset and tearful and I remember Dad just hugging her and smoothing her hair while she cried. At that time I had no idea what had happened, apart from the fact that Sadie’s dad was missing. Anyway, the police tracked him down eventually but he stayed with the other woman, refused to come home. An utter bastard. It made things very hard for Sadie and her mum. They had no money, couldn’t pay the mortgage and I think the house was repossessed. So they moved away, Sadie went to another school and I never saw her again.
‘Behind the Canvas’ is available on Amazon for Kindle
P. S. Temple-Murray 