I was going to take redundancy and look for another job but in between I wanted to finish the book. If I’d spent £200, I wouldn’t have necessarily been so strict with myself. The course cost £3,500, so it was a big commitment. I’d have no integrity if someone asked and I said: ‘I didn’t write it.’ This time I told everyone I was writing a novel so I’d be embarrassed into finishing. I had already done a creative writing course and wrote short pieces of fiction. I felt enrolling would give me the discipline to write it. I’d had this idea for 15 years, the characters were so big they were about to burst out of my head but I had two kids and a full-time job. How many say: ‘I want to write a novel?’ I was becoming a cliché. It was one evening a week and one Saturday a month. I did a six-month course at Faber Academy to learn to write a novel. How do they hide it? My interest was in the different faces people present to the public and how we hide things.

During my job I found when covering stories about killers, everyone would be surprised when their friend or colleague was found to be a murderer. Everyone was trying to be cool and were maybe not who they appeared. I wondered if it would be possible to really know the people I was meeting. I had the idea 15 years ago when I was working in Ibiza for the summer. From there, her own life begins to unravel. In the present, Rachel, a TV crime reporter, is covering the disappearance of a woman who turns out to be her old friend. The characters meet at school and form a bond. The book is about a close female friendship that turns to obsession.

Colette McBeth’s debut novel, Precious Thing, is about a female friendship that turns to obsession (Picture: supplied)įormer BBC reporter Colette McBeth, 38, has published her first novel, Precious Thing, a thriller inspired by a previous job in Ibiza.

Precious thing by colette mcbeth