With ‘The Donor’ this time I have focused on sibling rivalry, writing the story from several perspectives.  I have never had any brothers or sisters of my own, but know plenty of people who are lucky enough to have one or two siblings, and I can vouch for the fact that sisterly relationships in particular can sometimes be fraught if not downright rocky.

Running alongside this theme is my love of the Isle of Wight.  I was just too young to have attended the 1970 music festival on the Island where Clare Ronson and Ross Tyler meet, but often visit Freshwater Bay, look out over Afton Down, and try to imagine what a gathering of 600,000 people there must have looked like.  While writing The Donor I visited Dimbola Lodge at Freshwater, which apart from an exhibition of pictures by the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, also houses a museum of 1970 festival artefacts.  I immersed myself in the festival for a day, and pretended I was there.

Clare and  Ross are set for a happily ever after ending, until Clare’s sister Izzy and Ross catch sight of each other when Clare brings him home to meet her parents.   The fallout from this meeting lasts for over 30 years, until Ross turns up on Clare’s doorstep pleading with her to help Izzy in a way that only a sister can.

Life as I know it is definitely starting to be a bit of a drag, due to the fact that I’ve been awake now for 3 days and nights on Desolation Hill.  I am finished, kaput. Thank God it’s the last day, that’s all I can say.

            I yawn for the umpteenth time and watch in a kind of stupor as the fences are torn down. Ruth jumps up excitedly and decides that she wants to try and get nearer the stage.  I watch her treading unconcerned over zombie-like bodies lying comatose and frying in the heat of the late August afternoon, and try to summon up enough strength to follow her.  But by then, hungrier and more tired than I have ever been, I am faced with the certainty that all I really want to do is to go home. Bands have started to merge one into the other, but I know I’ll have to face a ribbing from Ruth if I set off without first having tried to get nearer the stage if only to feast one weary eye on the hunk of masculinity that is Paul Rogers while there is still some good daylight left.

            I force my body to move, performing a quick recce around what has transformed in three days from arable farmland into a nuclear fallout zone contained in some kind of human landfill site. I cannot see Ruth, but I stumble on regardless. Somewhere out there my friend has become lost in a sea of 500,000 faces; just another flower-bedecked hippie indistinguishable from the masses. 

            Far away on the horizon I can see a speck holding a microphone stand up above his head; Paul Rogers is holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, and I am missing it.  Behind him on the low stage, long hair flying in the sultry air, Paul Kossoff, six string shredder extraordinaire, is ripping into the solo for ‘All Right Now.’

            I cannot make my legs walk another step.  I yawn.  Infuriatingly I still seem to be on Desolation Hill as far as I can make out. Sighing with fatigue, I slump down on the grass where I stand, close my eyes, and listen to the hubbub around me.  My long hair feels like a heavy blanket on my back; I desperately want something to eat, I need a bath, and I ache for my mum to be fussing around me like she does when I am sick.

            “Hey babe, have some of this.”

            I am startled by a voice very close to my ear. I open my eyes again and look to my left to see what only can be described as a bronzed, blond Adonis, with long fair curls stretching down over his shoulders.  He is stripped to the waist apart from a small rucksack on his back, and wears frayed pale-blue Levi shorts and a pair of well-worn ‘Jesus creeper’ sandals.

Worldwide link to Waiting in the Wings: http://bookShow.me/B01M3MOEPV
Worldwide link to The Donor: http://bookShow.me/B01G3KFZ64

About Stevie: