I don’t need to worry about that now, Ed says. The worst is over, and I am safe. My mother tells me that too when she visits and says she loves me and she is sorry. I don’t know why she should be sorry; she wasn’t bad. I have a room that is square, and clean. I have people around me who make me feel I am not alone, and I understand them. I don’t stand at the edge of a conversation with the panic any more, trying to find the right answer, trying to understand the people talking.
There is a film library and I chose a film with Ed helping and my mother came and we watched it with Ed because he has to be in my room when my mother comes, and it says, ‘It will be alright in the end; if it’s not alright it’s not the end.’ My mother was crying then, and tried to squeeze my hand, and I didn’t want her to.
I don’t want their alright. I am alright. Why is your alright better than ours? Do you think that you are happy with your tears and your failed loves that you write about, and your pubs and your talk and your dreams? Too many emotions, too much pain.
Some things in life never end.
Acknowledgements
I am so grateful to all the people who got me to this point. I have had a wonderful team next to me helping every step of the way. I have always wanted to write a book, but it was only after I took time out to do the Faber Academy Write a Novel course that I actually applied myself seriously and finished The Man on the Middle Floor. Gillian Slovo was a benevolent taskmaster who treated us like writers and really produced results. On that course I met Rebecca de Ruvo-Akerlund, who became a great friend, and who came up with so many ideas for The Man on the Middle Floor for which I will always be very grateful. She has been a writing companion and a friend, and her books have spurred me on. The others on the course, Hina Belitz, Barry Florin and my soon-to-be-son-in-law Dave Atherton, all contributed in different ways and I love them all.
Thank you to my family, who have had my back and put up with endless hours of having to be quiet while I wrote, bringing me cups of tea and encouraging me to keep going. In this I include the polymath who is Andrew Staples, creator of my website, taker of pictures and headshots, and singer of beautiful opera music to keep me calm. A massive thank you also to Debbie Elliot from HarperCollins who generously pointed me in all kinds of helpful directions and was a fount of wisdom, and to Mopsy Wass, who put us together again and offered encouragement at my lowest points. Massive thanks to Louise Gillespie from Pillar Box PR, who listened to my frustrations with the publishing process, helped with every aspect from editing and angst about covers without complaint at breakfasts at Colbert and lunches at Trinity and never ignored a WhatsApp, and to my friends who read the book and gave me feedback: Katherine Robertson, Wendy Ryan, Emma Norris, Caroline Craig, Katie Martin and my South African touchstone Michelle Mundell. You should all write books.
To the team at RedDoor, who are changing publishing one book at a time, Clare Christian, Anna Burtt and Heather Boisseau – you guided me through the stressful post-writing phase of The Man on the Middle Floor – and a special thank you to Anna for showing me how to ‘do’ social media and remain sane. I am also eternally grateful to Linda McQueen for her editing skills, which were invaluable. Thank you also to Patrick Knowles for the cover design.
Thank you to Mrs H., my English teacher at Rowan Hill, to my parents for giving me a life full of stories, and to my grandparents and Jeff John who taught me kindness and who loved me.
Above all, to my people, all of you, who have had faith in me and confidence in my abilities. Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my three daughters, to Tommy for his beautiful illustrations, for having to listen to me read out endless pages and never doubting me for a second, and to my gorgeous South African husband, Gerry, for breaking his rule never to read a book in case it ruins his eye for a ball, and who has spent twenty-three years loving me better.
Why I wrote The Man on the Middle Floor
I have four children. My first, Philippa, was born when I was still twenty-one, and by the time I was twenty-five I had three daughters under the age of three. I absolutely love motherhood, nurturing and babies. This book was never supposed to be the first book I wrote; instead I was going to write a thriller that was part memoir and part fiction based around my childhood.
Then I had my fourth child, who is now nineteen, and I realised as he grew up what a massive shift had taken place in the twelve years since my last daughter was born. Political correctness had invaded every corner of parenting and childhood. Academic exams started almost as soon as the toddler stage was over. There was homework and no time for play, children were much more likely to have been in nurseries very early and not at home.
These are all sudden and rapid changes, and I have asked myself often how schools can have our children for such long periods and then let them emerge with no social skills not knowing the difference between an oak tree and a willow tree, or how to manage money, or how to change a car wheel, while the government changes targets and literacy levels compulsively.
All these are subjects for discussion, but, distilled down, are the questions that were most pertinent and which informed The Man on the Middle Floor, gleaned from the hundreds of children and young people I have had in my home and got to know. Why are they so much unhappier, and why is there such a huge increase in disconnection? This generation has the highest suicide rates, the highest depression rates, and the number of children on the autistic spectrum has increased dramatically.
Society, attachment, love and kindness are in my opinion what define us as human beings. Compassion and intelligence, using our judgement and being able to express opinions without being shouted down, are vital. The Man on the Middle Floor asks why we are so lost when we have so many tools for social interaction these days? Why the increase in solitude? Where are we going, and should we turn back before it’s too late?
Book Club Questions
1.Do you think that the number of single-person households has increased the breakdown in relationships?
2.Do you think that Nick’s actions are as a result of his Asperger’s or brought about by society’s inability to deal with people on the autistic spectrum adequately? Nature or nurture?
3.Do you think that political correctness in government or in the police is positive or negative?
4.Bearing in mind that even in the Natural Kingdom animals still have a need to bond with a primary carer, should we be thinking again about how we treat our children during infancy and childhood?
5.While writing The Man on the Middle Floor I was encouraged at several stages to remove characters that were controversial but exist within society. Do you enjoy reading controversial characters in books? Why?
6.Karen puts her work before her children in a very extreme way. Do you believe that there is always a choice for women… it is possible to have it all?
7.Karen’s daughter fulfils an adult role of carer at a very young age. Do you think there should be provisions to help children in this position, and, if so, what?
8.Do you think that the breakdown of face-to-face interactions such as going to church, going to the shops, Women’s Institutes, Working Men’s Clubs and so on has contributed to the general feeling of solitude?
9.Do you think that the rapid increase in the rate of autism can be attributed to the following: the food chain, changes in society, social media and television, lack of face-to-face interaction. If none of these, then what do you think?
10.Do you think that we are moving towards a new kind of societal structure and should forget about old-fashioned ways of doing things and look forward?
About the Author
Elizabeth Moore lives in South London with her South African husband, son Tommy, two Labradors, and daughters who come and go when they are not singing, diving or travelling. Her friends call her Lizzy and she spends her time with her family, eating out with friends and writing about it, and plotting out novels. She loves politics, is fascinated by people’s motivation in acts good and wicked, and is a
lways about to turn into a domestic goddess who bakes and is mindful. She has two more novels and a Young Adult novella in the pipeline, and writes for a wide range of magazines and national newspapers. She loves hearing if you have enjoyed her writing… or not. Reach her at elizabethsmoore. com, and keep up with appearances and thoughts in her newsletter.
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