Angela Tomasky

And I think because he really loves them, he really loves these siblings and he doesn't judge them.

I don't think he's scared to tell everything he knows.

I think he's really keen to do that.

And I think he, he wants the reader to love them as he does, but I think he wants them to, he wants the reader to love these siblings as they are and not to hide anything, but still be lovable.

And I think they are, I love them.

And with all their flaws and all their eccentricities, I think he understands, you know, why they came to be as they were, why they came to behave as they do.

And he loves them anyway.

I think with Annabelle, she was a victim of that sort of

normalizing sort of social pressures.

She behaved in an unusual way, yes, as you say, for the time.

And what happened was sort of, you know, another family member sort of steps in and because the love wasn't there, you know, things were able to happen to Annabel that really shouldn't have happened.

With Hugo, I think, yes, there's part of that PTSD with his experiences in the war, but also the pressures of responsibility of taking on a role that he wasn't equipped for.

So, I mean, all the issues spring from the primary aim of the book, which was to explore the effects of fatherlessness, the absent father figure.

So that's the primary cause, as I see it, of these forms of behavior, these problems that these siblings encounter.

Yes, I wrote it as it appears in the book.

So it was very much following Maximus, just being Maximus.

And, you know, I had played with this story for 20 years.

You know, it was 20 years since I'd been to the house, been to Tinsfield

And so I knew the story really well and I knew the characters really well and the place really well.

So I was able to just sort of write it.