I signed up to the Prioritise Your Writing course starting in January 2020 after making it my new year’s resolution to finally achieve my lifelong dream of writing a novel. I had seen an article about Writing Room on the Palmers Green Community Facebook page and decided to enrol immediately before life got in the way and I talked myself out of it. The course gave me the motivation and confidence I needed, and afterwards I kept the momentum going and finished my first manuscript five months later. Although the covid pandemic threatened to derail me, as I juggled working and home-schooling my children, writing became my sanctuary and I was determined to stay on track.
I started submitting to agents and publishers and signed a book deal later that year. My debut novel, a domestic noir called The Missing Husband, was released in May 2021 and I couldn’t believe it when it quickly became an Amazon Kindle top 100 bestseller. My second novel, The Woman Next Door, followed later that year and my third, The Legacy of Eve, will be published in August 2022. It’s a drama about parenthood and a family touched by tragedy and touches on topics close to my heart.
I trained and worked as a journalist before moving into communications in the charity and education sectors. I live in North London with my husband, two children and two rescue cats.
You can find out more about me and my books at natashaboydell.co.uk
Extract from The Missing Husband
There is nothing remarkable about the last time you saw your husband. It was a typical September day, a wet weekday morning just like any of the thousands that have passed before it without ceremony. You were alone in the kitchen, tidying up the aftermath of the children’s breakfast when he walked in. His hair was still damp from his shower and the fresh, clean smell of toothpaste and lemon shower gel emanated from him, just as it did every morning. It was one of your favourite smells and even after all these years of marriage you still paused for a second to breathe it in.
You switched on the coffee machine, sliced some sourdough bread and put it in the toaster, while he grabbed the coffee cups and milk; years of cohabitation creating a routine so ingrained that you were hardly aware you were doing it anymore. The children had gone to school early that morning, so you had a rare, uninterrupted breakfast together, sipping your still hot coffee and talking about the mundane topics of family life. Then he wiped his mouth, stood up, kissed you and left – his mind, you imagined, already preoccupied with the tasks of the day ahead.
It has now been five months and you haven’t seen him since.
You’ve replayed that morning over and over again in your head. You’ve obsessed over every single second of that day and the days leading up to it. Recently someone asked you, ‘If you knew then that it would be the last time you saw him, would you have done anything differently?’
The answer is, you have no idea anymore. Because, what do you do when your husband has betrayed you? When he has turned his back on everything you built together, on your children, on your intertwined life as a family unit? When his selfishness has broken you and the life you thought was real? When every time you think you’ve found the answers, something happens to plant a new seed of doubt in your mind?
You carry on. You put the kettle on, you look after the kids and you get on with your life.
Because, really, what else can you do?