Someone Who Isn’t Me

Sunk Island

Andy’s death draws Becca back into danger as an unscrupulous police officer manipulates her into investigating suspicious activity at the pub.

Kay McKinnon, Becca’s fostermother, has realised retirement is not for her and is renting a house in Sunk Island. She tells herself this is because it is within easy commuting distance of Hull, where she works for Tania’s House, a drugs charity that supports young people who are recovering from drug dependency. In fact, she is still looking for places where she would have chosen to live had her late husband, Matt, still been alive. Together, they would have been drawn to the isolation and the beauty of the area, to the prospect of walks along the estuary with their dog, Milo, to birdwatching; but these things are not the same on her own.

Late night visitations

Kay is warned about the isolation of Sunk Island, the farm thefts, the cars that drive through the area in the small hours, and evidence of more sinister activity. Does she hear footsteps in her rambling house late atnight, or is she letting her imagination run away with her? Her work life is problematic as well. Her new boss doesn’t trust her; one of her clients, Poppy, seems to be falling back into drugs dependency and is rejecting the support of Tania’s House in favour of the sinister Leesha, a woman who seems to be supplying her with drugs.

Anger and futility

Becca is fighting her own battles. She still struggles with anger and a sense of futility. She is desperately poor despite working at two jobs, and Andy’s death comes close to tipping her over into despair. She doesn’t know who she is any more, ‘someone who isn’t me,’ and has lost her sense of purpose.

Snitch bitch

Becca wants to know who killed Andy, and why his death seems to be related to the pub where she works. Encouraged by the ambitious but amoral detective, Mark Curwen, she starts to ask questions which draw the attention of people who are afraid of what she may know and what she may find out. This leads to her being attacked as a police informer, a ‘snitch bitch’.

Young Detective-Constable Dinah Mason tries to win Becca’s confidence, but Becca has every reason to distrust the police. She can’t even ask Kay, her usual source of support for help, as she is terrified of putting Kay in danger.

But Kay is already in danger. Then the child of Becca’s friend and colleague, Jade, is threatened, and Becca has to act. Her journey takes her to Kay’s house, but then on to a terrifying confrontation at Spragger Drain sluice, beside the Humber estuary at full tide, the place of Andy’s murder.

How I wrote Someone Who Isn’t Me

As with Life Ruins, I drew on my experience of teaching young adults; particularly those who had faced trauma in childhood. A big problem when working with these damaged young people is that they have learned, often with good reason, not to trust the systems that are there to help them. They can also keep repeating damaging behaviour that can cost them jobs, accommodation or even their freedom, because it represents a familiar place, and paradoxically can seem safer than the path they are being guided towards. Kay’s client, Poppy, is just such a young woman who has fallen under the influence of someone who wishes her harm, but is unable or unwilling to see the danger.

Poverty

I also wanted to look at the effects of poverty and how it takes away your choices. People who have not been there find it hard to imagine a life where paying the bus fare to work might mean not eating that day, and where a ten-pound shortfall in your budget is as impossible to correct as a shortfall of ten thousand pounds.

Becca has two jobs, but struggles to feed herself and pay the rent. Her colleague, Jade, has to be at work for the start of the early shift, even though she needs to be at home as her son, Lewis, is truanting and getting involved with street gangs. She can’t deliver him to the school gate each morning without losing her job. I wanted to write about the ways that poverty, particularly among working people, is causing high levels of social breakdown.

The bait and the hook

‘County lines’ is a term used to describe organised criminal gangs and networks that bring illegal drugs into the country and move them around different areas. These gangs often use children and vulnerable adults to transport and store the drugs and money; and they also use coercion, threats and violence to enforce obedience. Lewis, young and impressionable, sees life in a gang as the way to riches he knows his mother can never give him. He can only see the bait. He is too young to see the hook.

Sunk Island as a location

I used Sunk Island as the setting for the first murder because of its central importance to the plot. A lot of the action takes place there. It is not, in fact, an island but a flat, empty and beautiful plain east of Hull, criss-crossed by drains, with a few tree-lined roads, narrow and barely used. Its shores form the banks of the Humber Estuary, a major shipping route that brings cargo to and from the port of Hull. The land is so flat that optical illusion can make it seem as though ocean-going cargo vessels are sailing across the fields. The shores of the estuary are only lightly policed, and with the reduction of the coastguard, the isolated and little used creeks of Sunk Island offer opportunities for unobserved activity. Writing Someone Who Isn’t Me gave me the opportunity to pay homage to a place that I love.

Someone Who Isn’t Me was originally published under the name Danuta Kot, as was Life Ruins.