Today I returned home. Or at least to my virtual home, Pitkirtly. Everything looks much the same as when I was last there. It isn’t the kind of place that changes very much, or very quickly. Apart from the new Cultural Centre and new police station that have sprung up during the time I’ve been writing about the place, obviously. The Happiness Club has been and gone. The snow that played a large part in the plot for ‘Frozen in Crime’ has gone, but the icy wind still blows over from Siberia from time to time – it wouldn’t be April in Fife without that particular meteorological feature.
The characters have been quite welcoming so far despite my recent neglect of them. One or two have, I suspect, got out of hand in my absence and started to make a mess of their lives. It will be up to me to straighten things out in the next little while.
I am not entirely surprised to feel at home in my fictitious town as I write, and I’ve met the characters so often that I think of them as friends. The really funny thing, it seems to me, is that I feel equally at home when visiting the small towns on the Fife coast that my town is based on. I sort of expect to meet Dave and Jemima at the fishmongers’ or to hear Jock McLean holding forth at the local pub about teenagers, and I sometimes look for the Cultural Centre and get a surprise when it isn’t actually there.
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 