The idea for Room 706 came about when my children were very young. I was so
tired that all I wanted to do was to go to a hotel, shut the door, and be by myself for a
short time, with no one making demands on me or wanting to touch me. When I told
people this fantasy, they thought perhaps I was saying that I wanted to go to a hotel
with a lover. They didn’t seem able to get their head around a mother’s need for
some time alone. In fact it became apparent that for many people the idea of a
woman taking a lover was far more socially acceptable than the idea of her being
alone.
It was from this that the idea came for a novel in which a woman is stuck in a hotel
that has been taken under siege by terrorists. At first, I thought what if having gone
to the hotel alone for a rest, the woman felt it was easier to tell her spouse she was
with a lover. But from this came my story of woman who was meeting her lover,
despite a loving and happy marriage with her husband. What would happen, I
wondered, if she ended up having to have actual conversations with someone she
just wanted to meet for sex?
I was also interested in subverting all the magazine and newspaper features you
read telling women how to get their lover to leave their spouse. What if a woman did
not want her lover to be anything more than someone to have sex with? What if the
feature was ‘How to ensure your lover does not leave their spouse’ rather than the
opposite?
Added to this was the interest I had taken in notes people left to their loved ones
when facing imminent death, specifically in the September 11th attacks on the US in
2001. What information would you pass on in a final note? It nearly always came
down, reports said, to “I love you”. Later, a friend who was very ill, said that she
would also want to tell her husband the password for the online supermarket
account.
All of these ideas came together in Kate, a working mother of two young children,
who is grappling with the mental load that comes with motherhood, and the
emotional complexities of marriage, as well as the sense of mortality that comes with
adulthood, and who is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.
However, when people ask me what Room 706 is about, I have to admit that while it
is pretty tense at times, it’s as much a love story as it is a thriller. It’s only when faced
with her potential end, and time to reflect on her past, that Kate is able to imagine
her future, and what she might want if she gets the chance to live it.
I’m so thrilled Room 706 has been chosen as the PREM1ER December pick. I hope
you enjoy it!
- Ellie Levenson
