I’ve had a lot of fun creating a Pinterest board for Now You See Me. Lots of pictures of places I mention in the book, and a few other things besides.
I based my fictional town loosely on the coastal resort of Clevedon in North Somerset. My grandparents lived in a house on Dial Hill with incredible views over the town and the Bristol Channel. I used to spend hours with a pair of binoculars looking out of the big picture window in the living room, watching the ships passing to and from Bristol docks. You could watch people walking along the sea front, heading up to the Salthouse fields and Marine Lake, both of which feature heavily in the book. On a fine day, you could see right across the water to the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm, even to the distant hills and factories in Wales.
A popular resort in the Victorian era, Clevedon has lots of rather grand stone houses, its own pier and an ornamental bandstand, though its beaches are more mud and seaweed than sand and blue sea. I spent many holidays there as a child, and it holds many happy memories. Although I did nip back for a weekend when I was editing Now You See Me, it wasn’t hard to recall the landmarks. The places you love best as a child linger on the memory, and it’s fascinating to go back and find that everywhere is much as you remember it.
That said, my grandparents are no longer alive and their house, sold on ten years ago to a developer, has now changed almost beyond recognition. Perhaps there are some places you should never return to. But the plaque commemorating their lives is still on the pier, along with a dedication at the front of my book. I‘d like to think, had they still been alive, that they would have enjoyed it.