The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the 'Inspector Anjelica Henley' series Nadine Matheson sits down with fellow authors for insightful, honest, and entertaining conversations. Each episode dives deep into the world of writing, from the publishing journey to overcoming challenges, the experiences that shape their work, and anything else that comes up when great minds come together. Whether you're a fan of gripping stories or curious about the life behind the books, 'The Conversation' promises thought-provoking chats and moments of inspiration.
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The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Marcia Hutchinson: Bending But Not Breaking In The Race To Literary Success
What does success mean when you've spent your life running away rather than running towards something? Marcia Hutchinson's journey from a challenging childhood in Bradford to acclaimed debut novelist offers profound insights into resilience, creativity, and learning to celebrate life's achievements.
As Marcia Hutchinson celebrates her recognition as one of the Observer's debut novelists to watch in 2025 alongside the publication of "The Mercy Step," she's learning to run towards joy rather than away from pain. Her story reminds us that sometimes our most painful experiences can become the source of our greatest strengths.
Bradford, December 1962.
A precocious Mercy makes her reluctant entrance into the world, torn from the warm embrace of her mother’s womb, to a chaotic household that seems to have no place for her. Her siblings do not understand her, her mother’s attention is given to the Church, and the entire family lives at the whims of her father’s quick temper.
Left to herself, Mercy finds solace in books, her imagination, and the quiet comfort of her faithful toy, Dolly. But escapism has its limits, and as the grip of family, faith and fear threatens to close in, Mercy learns she must act if she wants a different future; one where she is seen, heard, and her family set free.
The Mercy Step is a sharply-witted and tender portrait of a young girl’s quiet rebellion, and her refusal to be broken.
Cosmic Muse: Vol. I: Your Voice (Mercury)Find your mercury placement in your birth chart and activate your personal voice codes.
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And gradually over that time I just got really positive feedback and people saying you know you can write, you should turn this into a novel and I just thought I don't have the attention span to write a novel. I can't stick with one thing long enough.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with your host, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you're enjoying your week. And welcome to the penultimate week of season three of the Conversation. And I can't believe we're here, but we are here. There are three more conversations left and then after that we're having a short break for the summer. We will be on hiatus, but I will not leave you quiet, I will not leave you empty. I will be releasing what I'll be calling the summer break episode, so there will still be content over our summer break, and then I'll be back for season four in September and I really can't wait. But what I'm going to do is go straight into today's conversation with author Marcia Hutchinson, and can I just say I don't usually release the videos of these podcasts. I haven't done so, but I will be doing so in season four. But if I did release a video, all you would see is moments where my mouth was just open, my jaw dropped and, as I usually say, that it's not very conducive for a podcast for me to be stunned into silence. But it will all make sense when you listen to my conversation with Marcia Hutchinson.
Speaker 2:Now a little bit about Marcia. Her debut novel, the Mercy Step, is out today and in January 2025 she was named by the Observer as a debut novelist to watch. And if Marcia Hutchinson sounds familiar to the listeners of the Conversation, that's because she appeared on episode 103 with her co-author, kate Griffin, and together they are known as Lila Kane, and they came on the podcast to talk about their novel, the Blackbirds of St Giles. Now, in today's conversation with Marcia Hutchinson, we talk about the emotional challenge of writing the Mercy Step, finding humour in life's challenges, and what it means to really celebrate. Now, as always, sit back, we'll go forward and enjoy the conversation. Marcia Hutchinson, welcome to the conversation. Oh, thank you for having me on right. I have a long question for you. Actually, no, it's not even going to start with a question, it's gonna I'm gonna list your achievements and then I'm gonna, and then I'm gonna put the question to you. So I've got the list of achievements as you went to Oxford University. Was you the first student in your school to go to Oxford?
Speaker 1:Yeah, two of us went that year but apparently no one's ever been since in the 40 years since. Seriously, yeah, it was a one off because they invited me back a while ago to talk to the pupils. They said we really want you to encourage them because no one's been since you and that was a good 10 years ago they invited me back so I think other than the two of us I mean it was an inner city, comprehensive in Bradford yeah, never happened before or since that see, I wasn't even supposed to go there, but that's crazy.
Speaker 2:Only two in like 40 years, yeah yeah. Wow, okay, well, I was going to say you went to Oxford University only one or two from your school to go, became a lawyer, founded Primary Colours, an educational publishing company, in 2014,. Was awarded an MBE in 2011 for services to cultural diversity, elected as Labour councillor of Manchester, and then you teach Zumba and spinning yoga.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I do so my question, before you even get onto the writing, is you've achieved a lot, so what does success, in this time of your life and with this new literary career taking place, what does success mean to you?
Speaker 1:It means being able to relax, because I think I've always been very driven. I've not realised that I've been very driven, but I clearly have. I've never wanted to sort of rest on my laurels. I didn't have no laurels to rest on, so I always had this sense of a constant running. I think when people read the Mercy Step, which is somewhat autobiographical, they'll understand you've got this child who, just like I, have to make it, I have to keep going. You know, it's almost like a set of tigers chasing you and it's like you just keep running, girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but don't you think it's kind of like that's all to do with how we grew up? So, like you know, your family's Jamaican, that's all to do with how we grew up? So, like you know, your family's Jamaican, mine's Grenadian, and it's that that whole thing of? We need to keep working, you need to keep building, you need to be better and do better than those who came before you and those who came first to the UK. So in my case, my grandparents and my mum and dad came afterwards, you know, because then they're sent for, but it's that's kind of drilled into you. So, even though you may not realize, you've been striving for it.
Speaker 1:Subconsciously it's there yeah, I think with me there was a sort of different element to it as well, which is because my parents didn't have a very happy marriage and I just remember thinking I never want to rely on a man for money. I need to have my own money, um, because if I need to run, I need to be able to run, which is not necessary. It's not necessarily the best way to start life, because you're kind of running from rather than running to, and I think getting to, um, you know this age, I realize that I want to run towards something, not away from something, and the writing and the publishing is what I want to run towards.
Speaker 2:My grandma, my mum's mum. She always used to say to us make sure you got your vex money, your vex money.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, that's the title of a novel vex money. Yes, the vex money was.
Speaker 2:It was, in a sense, if you're stuck somewhere, you've got extra money in your purse so you can get a cab, you can do whatever sense. If you're stuck somewhere, you've got extra money in your purse so you can get a cab, you can do whatever. Well, if you need to run away, the money's there. So always make sure you got your vex money yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I got my vex money, didn't I? Which university is going to provide the most vex money? Oxford, right, that's where I'm going, did you?
Speaker 1:know what you was letting yourself in for when Oxford became a possibility not a clue and I didn't even, um, I kind of thought about it but I didn't tell anyone because from our school, expressing a view like that would have just led to ridicule. It wasn't until after I got my A-levels and I got straight A's and I thought, hang on a minute, if this can't get me into Oxford, nothing can. So I went backlevels and I got straight A's and I thought, hang on a minute, if this can't get me into Oxford, nothing can. So I went back to school and I went, hello, I want to go to Oxford. And the deputy had looked at me and she said why? And I never.
Speaker 2:No yeah why.
Speaker 1:Because I already had a. It just wasn't something that people were encouraged to do from our school. I already had a place at London School of Economics to study law, because I know you and I are both lawyers and it was like, yeah, you're already going to university, why? And I had to talk her into helping me and once she decided she was helping me, she did everything she could. Mrs Langrish, thank you. She found me someone to teach me for the entrance exam. They did it for free, you know. They really got behind me, but I had to push.
Speaker 2:I just I'm struggling to find the word, because on one hand there's one side of me that's thinking maybe she was asking you why because she wanted to see how serious you were. But then there's the other side of me. Then people always kind of thinking that you're less than and like who are you? It's like, well, who do you think you can go to Oxford?
Speaker 1:so there's two sides it can, it can fall on either side of the coin yeah, because one of the teachers who taught me English I shall not name her and you will find out why in a moment A few years ago, yeah, when I was awarded the MB, one of the teachers wrote to me and said oh hi, you know. I want to say congratulations and just wanted to let you know that when you wanted to study A-level English, the head of English came to me and said she didn't think you'd cope and she didn't want to teach you English, and she had to be forced to allow me to study A-level English. That was what was going on in the 1980s actively trying to keep a black girl out of A-level English. And I did it and I got an A.
Speaker 1:But it was hard dealing with that woman and I'm going to say this because I want it on record. I remember in one English class we got into an argument and she said we dragged Africa into the 20th century. And I'm like excuse me, I'm the only black girl in the class who remembered this we dragged Africa into the 20th century. This is what I was putting up with at school. Now, all the teachers weren't like that, but I didn't know the behind the scenes fighting between teachers to allow me to study.
Speaker 2:You would think, right, that this was like the Victorian England. It's like this is the night and the thing is, on one hand, it's like, well, I shouldn't really be surprised because you know, I was brought up with my dad drilling into my head you need be 10 times, but you need to be 10 times, but you gotta work twice as hard. You know, that's just the mantra. You know not just with me, I think any and I always, always say on this podcast I hesitate to say immigrant, because I never felt like we were immigrants, we would, we just were, we just were our family, we were just. Our background is from Grenada, but you know, everyone from our same ethnic background has had that whole. You need to be, you need to work harder just to even not even, not even to reach them at the same starting place, just to be maybe like 10 places behind.
Speaker 1:You have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good yeah, and yeah, that was it.
Speaker 1:I mean for A-levels. I'd picked my three A-levels and then the the careers person said oh, you need another academic A-level. And I thought, oh well, I want to do history. And they said well, you can't do A-level history because you haven't got O-level. You can't just take up a subject at A-level without having done O-level. And I argued and argued and they let me do it and I got an A and it's that kind of. It was just a fight. I remember when they did we're doing the scramble for Africa, and they all turned and looked at me because I was the only black girl doing history. I'm like, yeah, okay, let's do slavery now. And you can all look at me and I was only looking back on it. I think Jesus wept. How did I get through that?
Speaker 2:it's a madness. I mean it's the only way I can. It's just a madness because you know so. I started secondary school 93, yeah, so yeah, no, and I'm talking rubbish 1988 I started secondary school. I left secondary school in 1993 and I would be lying if I ever said I had any teacher say to me no, or you know, you need to explain why you feel like you should be doing this subject. My history teacher, mr Byrne. Mr Byrne gets a shout out.
Speaker 2:I remember him having such a go at me at parents evening because apparently I was not applying myself. And he said to my parents I think I was about 15, you need to take away her tv. She got a tv in her room. My dad said, yes, take 15, you need to take away her TV. She's got a TV in her room. My dad said, yes, take her, take away her TV, take away her music. And I got all militant. I was like you can take my TV, but you will never take my music. Take my TV, you'll never take my music. I'm all about the music, but it's just the contrast to you in the same like why, how, how?
Speaker 1:dare you, bradford in the 70s and 80s was tough. It was a tough place to grow up, especially as a black child. You had to be ready to run. You'd see skinheads and run and you just ran and if you didn't run fast I got hit in the head with a brick, knocked out cold. And this is skinheads in. I ran and you just ran and if you didn't run fast I got hit in the head with a brick, knocked out cold. And this is skinheads in Bradford. You just had to, and that is before the Yorkshire Ripper started murdering women. Oh lord.
Speaker 2:I'm not laughing, I'm not.
Speaker 1:It's just that I have, I think, when people have said they found my novel the Mercy Step funny. This is why it's funny, because you have to laugh or you would cry if you don't laugh.
Speaker 2:You exactly, if you don't laugh, you cry. But it's such. But you know it's such a contrast. I'm not saying things were perfect because they were far, far from perfect. You know London, southeast London, in late 80s, 90s me being a teenager in the 90s like they were far from perfect. But I remember when, um, the National Front said they were going to march and lose them, and the response wasn't oh, really, it was are you, are you really you think you're coming back to the east side? Bring it home, yeah, and we will meet you where you are. And that's what we kind of. I mean, there were no go areas like, okay, you know you shouldn't really go to this area because it is racist, but it was like we confronted it, but it's.
Speaker 2:But I did go to, I'm good. I did go to school and I remember and, by the way, I went to a catholic school, but I went to school in a in back in Bermondsey, southeast London, back in the day, which was it was predominantly white it's not how it is now and I remember going, going to school, sitting at my desk, and you'd see NF like scratch, you know they'll scratch it into the wooden desk with a compass, and then you'd see national front stickers and then later BMP stickers on the lamppost, like outside. That's the, that's the area I went to school in. But what do you think it says about you, though, when you think, when you look back at that time and I don't know why I'm so stunned because I heard the stories from my mum and dad, like growing up here but what did they say about you, your personality, that you're able to push like, push through that to, to be where you are now?
Speaker 1:I think it's it's just this sense of determination, um, everything, because life has always been a fight. I'm used to fighting and I'm used to struggling and I shouldn't have to. We, as black people and black women, shouldn't have to get up every morning and put your armor on and get on your horse and get your lance and say simi us up. But that's how I grew up. That's how I grew up. I mean, my mum tells me that I got pneumonia when I was six weeks old.
Speaker 1:I mean, bradford was cold, literally cold, and I was in hospital for a total of nine months out, my first year and I think, and other children died, and I think that sense of every breath you take you know we're talking sting now every breath you take was hard and so, um, living was not a given and so, just literally, fighting for life is something I've always had to do and it's not the best way to live, but it's probably how I've grown up.
Speaker 1:So everything has been a fight. So when you know, when I went to walks with people, like you know, father only bought me the one pony, and I'm, like you know, at least you got fed that sort of thing, um, and I don't think I should have had to be so strong, because sometimes when you don't bend you break, yeah, but that's how, that's how I grew up, that constant fighting because the, the pneumonia left me with asthma so that literally every breath was a struggle. I got because of that. That's kind of why I'm quite fit now, because I don't have a choice. I have to stay very fit or be ill.
Speaker 2:It's hard, isn't it? It's kind of like, you know, like I say, the trope of being the strong black woman. But then it's more than that. It's kind of more than a trope, because it's like you've seen your mother have to be the strong black woman, you've seen your aunties, you see your, your grandparents, like it's continuously around you, and then when you're, you know you're going through life like school should. Just, you know they will say school should be the best days of your life. You're like, but really it wasn't. Because you're, you're constantly having to fight your way through it and show your worth also, which is a load of nonsense in itself. You shouldn't, yeah, have to do that.
Speaker 1:I know, but it's ironic that school was good compared to home and that's the sad thing. So, even though school was difficult, home was worse because my dad was really violent and so school was like okay, school is bad. On a scale of badness, home is worse, um, and whenever I got out of school, I'd just go to the library until it shut and then I'd go home. Now it wasn't always like that, but that sense of being on tenterhooks, on eggshells, never knowing when it's gonna blow, that just has you constantly on eggshells, never knowing when it's going to blow, that just has you constantly.
Speaker 1:And I think, yeah, I've done a lot of research, counselling, therapy, you name it, I've tried it. And what happens to people who grow up like that is you literally burn out and you die young because you can't constantly go through your life with your foot on the accelerator. You literally die young and I'm like, okay, well, if I accelerator, you literally die young and I'm like, okay, well, if I'm gonna die young, let me get the books written first and the thing is, you're always like your home.
Speaker 2:Your home is supposed to be your refuge, that's supposed to be your resting place, and you know I'm always seeing this stuff from Oprah. Oprah said you know your home is supposed your home, your home should rise to meet you, so when you're after you finish work, when you finish school, you finish work and you're approaching your front door. That's your place where you should feel like, oh, like your shoulders drop down from your ears, yeah, you, you relax and you're ready to just yeah be, in an oasis of calmness, and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, me I realized my my home place now is is the gym when I'm teaching Zumba. It's me and 30 women and they will do exactly as I tell them to for the next 45 minutes and we are getting down and we are moving and I love the choreography and the dancing and people are going. Oh god, that was amazing. And we're just we're just off on one and it's like for these four, between these four walls, for the next 45 minutes. Your ass is mine.
Speaker 2:So, when you left Oxford, what were you looking for? Where did you think your life was going to go?
Speaker 1:Again, I think I was running from not running to. So I left Oxford in 85 and I moved to Brixton. So I lived in Brixton between 85 and 90. So, full on South London. I was there for the riots in 85 when they shot Cherry Gross, all of that.
Speaker 1:I was living in Brixton during that time and I got a job as a lawyer in the city and I simply I don't think I was consciously doing this, but I was looking to get as far from my childhood as humanly possible and I was thinking, ok, best university, oxford, most difficult subject, law. Most difficult law firm, city, difficult subject. So again, I was running away from not running to and I got that and I think I was probably the first black woman they'd ever hired and I didn't enjoy it at all and it was at that point I thought, ok, I'm doing something for the wrong reasons and eventually I moved back up north because I thought I really, really don't like this and on a lawyer's salary in Leeds or Bradford it goes a lot further. So I moved back up north and I thought, oh, all right, it's not the north, it's law. So eventually I left law and I set up Primary Colours. In your intro you said 2014. It's actually 1998.
Speaker 2:No, I meant to say end in 2014, because I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like that would have been in 1998. And it's been. Yeah, it's been a slow, gradual move to find out what do you want to do? What are you running towards, not what are you running away from. And it's always been creativity, whether it's writing or whether it's choreography. I'm a serial renovator, so, whether it's renovating houses, everything I've ever enjoyed has been creative.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I'm surprised you didn't run out, run away and leave the country. When you say you were constantly running away, I'm surprised London was the stop I would have gotten. No, no, I did run away.
Speaker 1:You were well spotted. Yeah, I married a black American and we lived in America for a while, so near Boston, I definitely ran away. Yeah, it's like I'm leaving on a jet plane literally did.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god, you know. You know, when you know you're doing all these academic things and you know law is, I say it's such a straight jacket of a subject, in sense of the way I put it. You know it's black or white, right or wrong, here's the law, here's the case law. You work your way around it for it, but it's very much a straight jacket. And when you're in school, you know you're doing your a levels and a levels are hard and you're getting all a, so you're working really hard for this. And then you dinner with all the stuff that's going on at home. Were you aware of this creative streak in you? Because for me, we always had music in my house. Always had music all the time. Like sunday morning starts off with my dad playing jim reeves in the morning and then in the evening ends with the playing Soka in the evening. But it was always there. So, yeah, where was the creativity?
Speaker 1:for me as a child, again, there was a lot of music, um, but my parents were sort of chalk and cheese. My dad loved his blue beat and his ska records and no, I'm not stop. Mum was totally religious. I was always singing near my god to thee. It was like it's like, how did you two ever meet? You're chalk and cheese. Because my dad never went to church and my mum never went to blues and dance and this and that kind of thing so, um, yeah, they were totally different.
Speaker 1:drawing I loved drawing as a child. I always had a little book and I was always drawing things or people or whatever I could see. That was my creativity as a child and I did art as one of my A-levels. I loved drawing and painting.
Speaker 2:Did you maintain that when you was at uni Doing law? No?
Speaker 1:no, I didn't. But I did take my sewing machine with me to uni Suitcase in one hand, hand sewing machine in the other, and I made all my clothes. I made ball gowns. People, oh my mercy, where did you get that ball gown? And it's like I made it, my god, and it's like I didn't have the kind of money they had.
Speaker 2:So I would just buy fabric and make all my clothes you know, like on this podcast, like we talk about imposter syndrome a lot. Did that ever sit with you at any stage?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, it took a while to get over the imposter syndrome. I think, particularly a place like Oxford, where people like David Cameron were my contemporary. So he was at my college. Um, I didn't know him I must point this out but it was that sort of place and he looked around at these people.
Speaker 1:But I remember somebody hinting that I only got in because I was black. And I'm like no, I got in because I got four grade A's at A level, just like you. But I didn't have tutors and I didn't go to a public school that had lots of experience of getting people in. I got in from a school that never got got pupils in before. And it's this sense of being attacked because you're black, when in fact you're as good, if not better, than them. And there was a lot of shoulder leaning of people going yeah, you're so strong. Please help me with this and please help me that. I remember somebody coming up to me and asking me if I could show them how the college washing machines worked and I'm like what you want me to be? A washerwoman now I didn't turn around, I got slavery done, but you know but to me it's just rude and I'm some.
Speaker 2:Someone else might think oh, but it's just nothing wrong because they just don't know. But you know this, there's something else behind that. Because they see you as they have, they see you as the stereotype in their head first, and not who you really are.
Speaker 1:They don't see you as Marcia the academic, amazing woman to to help them, to be there for them, to look after them. And because you're used to looking after, it's very easy to fall into that and you know. So. This is, I think, 82, 83. The Oxford University Dramatic Society put on the play these days it's called Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie, but you probably know that oh, no, the little N word. And they used the N word Even though the black students protested. They still did it the whole big ten little this. And this is in 82, when nobody was still using the word. They were still using it in oxford.
Speaker 1:So it was a very strange place in that on a surface level people seem to be very enlightened, very this, very that. But scratch the surface and you didn't need to scratch very deep. There it was. People asked me if I could sell them some weed Like this mouth in my life. Where am I supposed to find weed to sell you?
Speaker 1:And the one person who did have weed and I'm going to name her because she's died Lady Alethea Saville, a drug dealer, practically moved into her college rooms. That was a problem because then we all got overnight guests banned. They weren't allowed Now, police were never going to raid her, and I think it was a problem because then we all got overnight guests banned. They weren't allowed. Now police were never going to raid her and I think it was a drugs overdose. She died at about 30. Oh no, you know that idea that if you stop a black person every day, eventually you'll probably find them with a little something on them. But if you never stop white people, you're never going to find them with anything on them. So then you can say all black people smoke a lot of drugs.
Speaker 2:It's like the issue is how you police communities and the thing is, I don't think that sort of, I say, being around, that, that sort of attitude and that environment it didn't change when you move into law, especially if you're in, I think, especially if you're in the city law, because I remember, like teaching um in the law school and I had there weren't baby lawyers yet. So they're just law, they're just law graduates, they're doing the LPC. And there was one group I was, I don't know how it happened, on a Friday I was teaching this group and every student in that group. They didn't come from the red brick universities, they weren't also within cambridge, they were just every other, you know, all the former polytechnics, that's where they came from.
Speaker 2:And this one student and I don't know I said I don't know how it happened, it just happened that way and this one student, the end of the first class I taught and it was like his first week at law school, and he came up to me and he said Nadine, he goes.
Speaker 2:Before I walked into the classroom, he goes. I was thinking that's it, I'm just leaving, because I've never been around this sort of people from he goes. He's from East London, he went to, grew up in East London, went to secondary school, college, university in East London he still lives, all he knows is East London and he came to Holden, came to law school and he was surrounded with Oxbridge, the red brick, those who went to private school and he found it so intimidating and he goes until I walked into the classroom and I saw you and then he's sitting with other students who have similar backgrounds to him and he realized that actually this world is open to him yeah, there was a very high dropout rate at Oxford from kids from comprehensive schools and working class backgrounds, because it's a very sinkhole swim place back in the 80s probably less so now.
Speaker 1:So you only, you only had tutorials um three a fortnight, yeah, and you know you. There was no requirement to do anything in between. You just need to turn up with your essay done. But you had to read it out and there were only two of you in the tutorial, so there's nowhere to hide um, and the tutor would stop you in the middle and go justify that, what you mean by that, but and and it was backwards and forwards, so so in terms of law, it's a very good education, but it was hard listeners.
Speaker 2:It's time for a very short break. If you're enjoying this conversation with Nadine Matheson, I want to help keep the podcast going. Why not buy me a cup of coffee? Your support goes such a long way in keeping these conversations flowing. Just check out the link in the show notes. When did you realize you wanted to write, or not even that you wanted? I feel like that you needed to write yeah, I've always written bits and pieces.
Speaker 1:At uni I had a friend and we're still friends now and we sort of wrote a bit. She did English and when we left university we stayed in touch and we'd meet up and we'd write and we'd write short stories and then when I had kids it kind of dropped off a bit. Um, when I set up Primary Colours, which was an educational publishers, I drifted into the, the admin side of arts, because as a lawyer I could do the grant applications, this, that and the other. So I was hiring other writers, teachers and educationists to write the teaching packs. So I was doing less and less writing and more and more admin, but still writing the odd short story. And I think I got a couple of things in in a couple of local anthologies. But it became a sort of side hobby and yeah.
Speaker 1:I had children when they were growing up and it wasn't until probably about 10 years ago now. I was continuing writing the short stories, which became the mercy step and I went to a writing group in Manchester who were just brilliant. They're called culture word and it's writers from the global majority. So you go in the room and there's lots of different people and you read, you read your work and you get really good critique from other people and over the years it's a bit like an MA in creative writing, except it's just once a week and it's free and gradually over that time I just got really positive feedback and people saying you know you can write, you should turn this into into a novel, and I just thought I don't have the attention span to write a novel. I can't stick with one thing long enough.
Speaker 2:How can you say that when you look back at your past and all the things you've done and the high level of achievements that you've attained, and then you thought I can't sit there and do that?
Speaker 1:yeah, and it's. It's really weird. The achievement is almost an end in itself. I was about three years diagnosed with adhd and it all starts making sense. You're just chasing dopamine and once you got the dopamine, you're on to the next thing, and then the next thing and the next. Um, you never really sit back and celebrate. I remember a therapist saying and did you celebrate getting into Oxford? Right now, I just did the next thing. And the next thing I remember I think, oh yeah, the local, the school put it in the local papers. When we got into Oxford and I was on the dole at the time, I remember going to the dole office to sign on and the woman said weren't you in the newspapers for going to Oxford? And I was so embarrassed.
Speaker 2:That's the thing I was. My question was didn't you celebrate all these milestones, so you know, from the minute you get four straight A's and then you graduate from Oxford, then you get into a city law firm which ain't easy for anyone, you know you set up your company, you get your MB. Didn't you celebrate all of those moments, or was it just just on to the next, on to the other one?
Speaker 1:it was on to the next it was like phew, that's done. Relief on to the next. I had to literally have a therapist sit me down and say this this is how you celebrate. You don't have to drink if you don't want to drink, but you go out with your friends, get your nails done, have a spa day, and I'm thinking sounds like delicious to me, I want a spa day. This is another example of what I do. I love doing up houses, so I will buy a house, renovate it, live in it and then move, and I've done that 12 times in 12 consecutive years. I've never lived anywhere more than a year. I will finish it and then I'll look around and I'll go time for the next one.
Speaker 2:See, now I feel like I'm giving you therapy. Why, marcia, why do you feel like, like? Why do you not feel settled that you need to move? Do you think that's because of how you, how you were?
Speaker 1:brought up. That is one of the reasons that I write and that is one of the reasons that I wanted to understand why do you never feel settled? Why do you have to keep moving almost like a nomad? And I think it's that never really feeling safe and never really feeling settled and doing therapy and going over my home life. And I remember a therapist. I told her about one incident there's me laughing my head off and she said that alone would give you PTSD. And I'm like, oh, all right, well, that was just one of many.
Speaker 1:And I think it's that you never feel that you can relax now with some people that breaks you, because if you can never relax, you just keep going and going and going. If you're strong enough, it might not break you, but you're not going to have as full a life as you otherwise might. And for me. I've channeled it into writing to try and understand who is this person, what made her the person she is today, and how can I learn to just chill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kick back you got brothers and sisters, oh yeah, I'm seven of nine it's seven of nine.
Speaker 1:I'm not. I don't even know why.
Speaker 2:I'm sitting there amazed like seven or nine wasn't even that unique in my family so it's just the oldest.
Speaker 1:Four grew up in Jamaica, um, and I grew up one of five, so I was the middle child of the five who grew up in in England do they have similar experiences to you in terms of striving or constantly running away trying to find some kind of stability?
Speaker 1:no, no, they don't at all, and one of the reasons I know that is because my younger sister, who's two years younger than me, uh, she died 10 years ago and she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, um, and so she wrote her memoirs and she asked me to publish her memoirs after she passed, and I remember reading them and it was like I was getting to know her for the first time. I was shocked at what I was reading, because my dad died when I was 14 and she was 12, and I just remember a sense of relief. It's like like, oh, thank God, thank God in a. Oh, my dad's dead. It's like, thank God in a. Nobody is going to beat me up anymore.
Speaker 1:And when I read her memoirs, she talked about how distraught she was at her father dying and how that was a turning point in her life and I thought are we talking about the same person? Is this the same man? Because she, she was very much his favorite. I'm not even sure if she or he were aware of it, but she was very much his favorite and he didn't like me at all.
Speaker 1:And I think it's that sense of five kids growing up in the same house with five different childhoods yeah so I was either consciously or unconsciously scapegoated by my dad and that's very much why I wrote the Mercy Step. I needed to understand what was going on. Why are these five children had such very different childhoods? So I was the first in my family to go to uni. Four of them subsequently got degrees, but they went older or as adults and it was really trying to understand how are we all so different? Was it the year I spent in hospital? Because if you spend nine months before your first birthday in hospital, what you'd miss out on in terms of development and I think I missed out on some big chunks of child development- you know, you know what, like your, your experience, or not even your experience like your early, the early stages of your life.
Speaker 2:It kind of matches that, the experience of a lot of, I say, parent people of my, my parents age who were brought over by their parents and when they come over at the age whether they're eight years old, 10, 15, they come into a already another formed family and now they have to fit in and work out where they, even though they may be the oldest, because my mum, my mum, was the oldest out of her five, yeah, yeah, out of the five of them, but she was the oldest, but she came over when she was 15. So I think my auntie, I can't think how old my maybe might have been, might have been 10. So you miss out on a big gap of that family life and now you have to work out who you are, where you are, where you, where you sit, and then how the family moves around you. But you would have been young when you were a baby, but it's still kind of a similar thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because my mom tells me that when I came out of hospital I didn't know who she was. I would go to white nurses but I wouldn't go to her because obviously I've been seeing white people for the best part of a year. And she said she never put me down, she just held me to get so that I get to know her again. And I think, with the benefit of hindsight, that made my dad jealous. It's like put on your baby, um, and if she put me down I would scream blue murder. I remember one time I didn't know where she was I must have been about two or three and I just screamed and screamed. She was in the toilet. I said I've got it in the house.
Speaker 2:It weren't even like it, weren't even like you're in the supermarket and you lost your mum like it's happened.
Speaker 1:You're in the house, just screaming and screaming till I found her. So you've got that. I've lost my mom. Now I've found her. Now I'm never gonna, never gonna, let her go. My dad like what is it with this child? And I think back then people didn't understand child psychology and attachment and all of that. And that, I think, is what drives me to write, to understand who am I, how did I become the person I am? But but doing it through fiction rather than fact just allows you the freedom to be really creative.
Speaker 2:But then when people say to you oh, who is this based on? Because you know, when they say 1962, mercy was born, and you're like oh well, marcia was born in 1962.
Speaker 1:And when you were saying that strangely enough yeah, they're just separate enough for me to be able to be creative. They're just separate enough for me to say I wouldn't want to go and get to know that child. Um, it's not me, but it's. It's close and it's a way of stepping away so I can look back and ask the younger me what was it like? Yeah, and it's only having written the book and I tell you, it's like write a paragraph, cry, write another paragraph. I was getting to know this little girl. I was getting to know this little girl and I realized that one of the problems she had is that she was cleverer than her father, possibly cleverer than well, she was cleverer than her father and he did not like it.
Speaker 2:It's intimidating, isn't?
Speaker 1:it answering big people back and if you start explaining the inconsistencies in their arguments.
Speaker 2:Well, you're too bright, and I don't mean bright in a good way. You're too bright.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember, and this happened I was four I sat my mum down after things had happened and I said to my mum you have to leave At four years old. Four years old, and my mum was there, you, you know, upset for various reasons and eventually, when she went, yes, so I left, and we ran and I got a suitcase and I packed a suitcase, it actually left, but she eventually went back and he knew it was me who had talked her into leaving. So, and it's that sense of what does it do to a child? And it's only recently I came up, I came across the term the parentified child, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:You're not a child.
Speaker 1:Really you're not a child no, wasn't a child and that's but. The mercy character in the book is not a child. She's a fully grown adult in the body of a baby and she's trying to navigate a world where she can't operate the limbs because it doesn't, they don't work yet and she's like you know. I'm just disgusted with this body that I've been given. It really doesn't work and it's like taking a fully grown adult and putting them in a baby's body and going right off you go but you know, but I'm going back to when you was at home and you know, and you're you, you're having all these achievements.
Speaker 2:So you're getting your grade, your four a's, and you're going to Oxford, even though you didn't celebrate it and even though I know you said your dad died when you were, when you were 14, but did your mum and your siblings? Did they not recognize the achievement there? Because, even though you weren't celebrating, someone must have given you a piece not really.
Speaker 1:It was my cleverness, for want of a better term was more of a curse than a blessing, and it had always felt like more of a curse than a blessing. There was a lot of. Who do you think you are? Now you're going to Oxford, you think you're better than us, you're this, you're this, you're this. And it wasn't until my mum I don't think she'd never pushed me academically because she didn't need to. She didn't need to. Um, no, myself, you know, there are times when she'd do my chores and say, left Marcia with our book, then, um, but when I got into Oxford, it was only a big deal. After the school contacted the local paper and it was in the local paper and my mum worked as a cook for a big firm and the managing director saw the picture in the paper, came down to the canteen and said is this your daughter? And she said actually, yes, it is and it's.
Speaker 1:Then she realized it's a big deal yeah because Oxford is different from any other university and all I got when I was growing up, because I wore glasses as a child, is Becky, four Eyes, clever Clogs, this, that the other. It was just relentless. Even amongst my cohorts, my friends, it was all professor this and she swallowed her book and yeah, it was. I'm trying to think if anybody really sat me down, said you did, you did so well.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean. It's like give you a sweet, give you a drink. I was just like give me a little piece of cake and a.
Speaker 1:Oh no, they just took the mickey. They absolutely On a good day. They would take the mickey On a bad day, it would have vicious undertones. It was very much, it was who do you think you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. Who do you think you are?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm gonna have an extra plant in. Someone said, oh, I always knew. Oh, oh, this is the best one. Yes, it's me, pray for it is my fasting, it's like. Oh, so should I be thanking you, some of my mom's church friends. Yes, it's me.
Speaker 1:God on pan feminine and I'm like hang on a minute, you're just taking credit. But I do not ever remember someone saying you've done really well, congratulations. No that, that didn't. I just find that. Or if it did, I don't remember because so many of the negative comments came, I think.
Speaker 2:If you don't remember, I don't think it happened. So where did you find your piece? Was it in the library?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah it was. I found my peace in an environment where I knew I was safe and I would not be disturbed or frightened.
Speaker 1:So I never watch horror films. I know you're a crime writer. I can't even read crime novels. They're too scary, they're too much like real life for me. Other people, you know, they go out of their safe environment. You want the thrill and you want the chase. You want, frightened, to know my life. I want safety and peace and quiet and I want to know what's happening next. And it wasn't until I went to a therapist I realized oh, it's PTSD. So if I go to a restaurant I will sit with some facing the door. If my back is towards the door, I just can't relax. I need to be able to see a means of escape. I need to know how I can get out of any situation at any given time. I remember going to blues, you know, when I was 17, 18, and the blues were in these cellars and I'm like you know, if a fire starts, we are dead.
Speaker 1:I couldn't relax.
Speaker 2:I needed to be able to get out of any given situation. Were you in Brixton when the New Cross fire?
Speaker 1:took place. No, that was before, but I remember 13 dead, nothing said Jeez.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing I was thinking about. You know, talking about going to a blues. When we're talking about those who don't know like going to a blues, it was basically a party. Sometimes they took places in they. Most time they took place in someone's house or they could be, we say, deep in some, let's say, some cellar somewhere. And there was a. There was a party in new cross and 13 teenagers died because of because of a fire and he said there was 13 dead and nothing said almost certainly a racist attack, and what's always said when this happens is the police are so quick to rule out arson.
Speaker 1:It's like you can rule that out pretty quick. I mean in Bradford in I think it was 1881, the club that most of the black kids went to was on the third floor of a building called textile hall and that burnt down and the police immediately like, oh, there's no races, no, no, we can rule out, before the fire brigade even put the fires out. Oh, we can rule out. How can you rule it out so fast? And then when the building owners got the um insurance money, they never rebuilt the third floor thinking interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2:When did you, when did you feel safe? Do you feel safe now or you still you're not. You're not running away from things now, you're running to things, yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel safe when I'm at home. I feel safe when I'm with my good friends. I feel safe when I'm in the gym and I'm teaching. Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2:I think it's it's finding a really good cohort of friends yeah, when was the first time you actually celebrated an achievement, and what did you do to celebrate?
Speaker 1:well, I don't. It wasn't a formal celebration, but after, after finals at uni, you get sprayed with champagne and everyone would you know that? Well, that's what they did at Oxford. Um, your final exam, I did labour law, so I think I was one of the last people to finish my exams. It came out, they were all there just spraying me with champagne, you know, like after formula one races, and that was a sense of, yeah, achievement, I've finished this law degree and hopefully, you know, I was on target for a two, two one and I got a two one, um, so that that was, I think, a sense of celebration there yeah, did you appreciate, though?
Speaker 2:did you, and did you recognize it for what it was, or did you just think, is it just something I need to do and I'm off?
Speaker 1:no, I didn't then recognize it. I thought people are just spraying all this foolishness in my hair. Oh, I going to get all this on my hair. All my gowns are covered in alcohol. I've got nowhere to clean it. I immediately go into problem solving mode. This is a problem. How am I going to solve it? Because I've always been in problem solving mode, but that works so well as a novelist.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, it's like suit, it's like the superpower yeah, well, you need it then, because when you're doing your edits now you're now you're solving problems that you didn't even realize were necessarily there. But when did you, this one, want to know that, master? When did you celebrate and properly realize I'm celebrating, I'm enjoying it. This is not just a full stop on a moment.
Speaker 1:This is my moment if I'm honest, I don't think I ever really have. I am conscious, literally somebody would have to give me a list and say this is how you celebrate. You do this, then you do this, then you do this, and then you have hereby the I, the undersigned of, hereby celebrated. That is how I would have to do it. I remember one house I lived in and I thought I should learn how to relax. So I got a hammock, because there remember one house I lived in and I thought I should learn how to relax. So I got a hammock because there were two trees in the garden and I strung the hammock between the two trees and I got into the hammock and I lay back and I go is this relaxing?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say what the Grenadians would say bonjour. Like what? Why?
Speaker 1:I don't understand because I didn't know. My idea of relaxing is relaxing is other people's idea of doing a thing. My idea of relaxing is buying a house and renovating it. Right, let's go in, let's take out every wall on the top floor. Let's do that, let's do that, let's do that. It's almost like you've got this, what they call it the monkey brain, and you have to keep it occupied. You have to give it things to do, because it never stops well, let's look at 2025.
Speaker 2:We're in 2025. I'm going to list three things that happened to you in 2025, right? So the first one is that your beginning of the year, 26th of um january, you're listed in the observer newspaper as a debut novelist. To watch, right? They select you. So that's the first thing. And then the Blackbirds of St Giles, which you co-author with Kate Griffin, comes out.
Speaker 2:That's published yeah, two days later, two days, two days later, um, you know, you publish it under Lila Kane, but that's your. You publish a book and now, when this podcast, when this episode is being released so today, when it's being released, your literary debut in the Mercy Step is being published. These are three massive things You're not celebrating.
Speaker 1:I will because my friends force me to. But it's like that. So I've got a variety of friends I stay with. When I'm in London and I get down, they get the champagne. I say we need to celebrate, martin, I'm going.
Speaker 2:Well, if you must you know that's what I'm saying superficially. I say on the outside it's happening. What about inside?
Speaker 1:I'm getting there, but it's a really, really slow process. Oh god, I got a call. I was actually in. Um, oh, oh, I did celebrate, I did. I went on a holiday by myself over new years. I went to Tunisia. So there, and whilst I was in the airport, on the way back from Tunisia, I got the call to say oh, you've been selected. Um, as you know, one of the 10 best debut novelists for the Guardian, and I remember just standing there in the middle of the airport just crying who did you tell? The good news affected me just as much as if somebody said, by the way, somebody's died. Oh, that's sort of affecting me in the same way. I had to calm myself down.
Speaker 2:I thought I need to get on a plane now yeah, but who did you tell when you got that news? Who was the first person you told?
Speaker 1:I think my writing group, um, so this, this writing group, were in a whatsapp group, so I told them um, and then I I do remember thinking, right, I am gonna celebrate. I am not just going down to the Guardian uh well, it's the Observer's offices and just wear my jeans, I am gonna drag out my ball gown and I am gonna dress yeah, yeah, I'm gonna dress up because, listen, it's 2025, you are 62 years old and this is your debut. You are going to really enjoy this. So, yeah, I did celebrate.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking about debuts, let's talk about the debut. So do you want to tell the listeners of the conversation, even though we have spoken around it? Do you want to tell the listeners of the conversation about your debut, the Mercy Chair?
Speaker 1:it. Do you want to tell the listeners of the conversation about your debut? The mercy chair. Yeah, so the mercy step is loosely um inspired by. Why did I say the?
Speaker 2:mercy chair, the myth, the mercy step. Sorry, wrong with me, it's not right, the mercy couch.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the mercy step is inspired by my childhood in Bradford. It starts in 1962 and it runs up until the protagonist, mercy, is 11 years old and it's really a sort of in-depth look at a Windrush era family. How hard it is when it's a difficult marriage, how the children navigate this, how this middle child which Mercy is, navigates. It's a coming of age novel. It's her growing up but, as I think I've said earlier, it's this child who was kind of born old and trying to navigate the world of being a child through old eyes. Where does she find comfort? Where does she find solace? Her mom cares, but her mom has so many other things to deal with a job, other children, has to send money back to Jamaica to look after the children there. The husband who, let's just say, isn't as supportive as he could be, um, and her mother finds solace in religion. But mercy, being so rational, just can't sort of like, you know, lay it all at the floor of Jesus, mercy's's like. No, lay it at the floor of Mercy.
Speaker 2:And she's trying to do too much, but she doesn't really know any other way to function. Ok, so two questions following on from that.
Speaker 1:Did you face any challenges in writing the Mercy Step? Yeah, the biggest challenge was the emotional excavation required to go there and to feel the feelings and to get them on paper. Getting the feelings on paper wasn't hard, it was feeling them and literally writing through tears. Um, because, even though everything that happens to mercy, um, most of it happened to me, not necessarily in that order, so the order has been changed to, you know, write a better story, but I had to go there and that was hard sort of thing. You know, you get into the chapter where somebody dies and because my best friend as a child died in a hit and run accident and you think, right, I'm gonna have to go and face. That's one of the few people in the book who has her real name. Her real name was Joy and the title of her chapter Joy Died and I'm like my God, how prophetic.
Speaker 1:And it's like going back then. Even though I was only about six. I still feel that loss, because children weren't allowed to grieve. It was like you know, don't push yourself up in big people business. And I don't think it occurred to the adults around us that that's hard, watching someone lying on the pavement with little bubbles of blood just coming out of their mouth and eventually the bubbles stop and it's like oh, I don't even know she was dead yeah, sorry, no, it's, because I don't even know if it's just like a West Indian thing when it comes to death and funerals and things.
Speaker 2:I remember when my grandmother died I was 12. This is my mum's mum and it was my first funeral I'd ever been to. And I'm 12 and we've done the church bit. So now we're at the cemetery and they're putting her coffin in the ground and so I don't know who this woman was, some woman. My mum's literally breaking down on the side somewhere and this woman's pushing me go, look, go, look like pushing me to the gravesite, and I'm like why would you do that to a 12 year old?
Speaker 1:oh my god, I'm amazed that you said that, because there's a chapter in Mercy where something similar happens, after Mercy's father dies and a family friend pushes her into the living room where the body is and says go pay your respects to your father. But why would you do that? Why would you do that? Why would you put a child in a room and then close the door and just leave them with a corpse?
Speaker 2:No, not at all. Corpse, no, no, no, not at all. So, marcia, if you could spend an afternoon with any of your characters from the mercy step.
Speaker 1:Whom would you choose? And why? Probably joy, because she was the nearest to someone who understood me. We were the same age. She was also a middle child. She had an elder and a younger sister and although we never really talked much, she was just someone you could just be with. She was very, very quiet, could just be with. She was very, very quiet. She's really fast at running and we'd race up and down the back alley and she'd always win.
Speaker 1:I think she was someone that was mine. She was my friend, not anyone else's. She probably had other friends, but you know we don't count those and it's that link with that friend. It'd be really interesting to see who she turned out to be, had she grown up, had she had the chance to grow up, because there was another character that I didn't write about in the book is a friend of mine who was in a fire because the houses were heated by paraffin heaters and often they get knocked over and they set the place on fire and a friend in one of those fires and it was just like a normal thing, all so-and-so dead, so-and-so fire, so-and-so this, and it's like, oh my god it's.
Speaker 2:You know, you look, when you're looking back and you're talking about it and you, at a time it seems normal, oh, it's made to feel as if it's the norm. But when you look back you're like this, this, this is not normal at all, this isn't right at all. Can I tell you something funny before I ask you your last set of questions? So you know, in the beginning of the Mercy Step right, and I'm going to read it. It says but after the four left back home and the two born here, this is her seventh child and she knows the routine and it's the words back home.
Speaker 2:So when I must have been about five Now, I just grew up in my house with my parents constantly saying in the family oh, when we go back home, we go back home, we go back home. No one said Grenada. So when I went to school, I remember being in the classroom I must have been about five or six and I'm spinning the globe, spinning the globe in the classroom, spinning it, and the teacher says Nadine, what are you looking for? I said I'm looking for back home on the globe, because that's what I grew up hearing. And then I had to go home like mum. Where were you from? I'm from Grenada, but they always just said we're going back home.
Speaker 1:So that was my little story yeah, it's that sense of this home that you've never been to it's not really your home, because when I did go to Jamaica for the first time when I was, I think about 20 people were like English girl oh yeah oh right, then you still get it.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's English girl, right, marcia? Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?
Speaker 1:definitely a hybrid. I think I'm an extroverted introvert, so I can go to parties and I can be out there, but after a couple of hours I need to go and lie in a darkened room and recover from all the social interaction and then gather my strength and then I can sally forth again.
Speaker 2:Yes, Okay, so what challenge or experience? You might have all said it already, but what challenge or experience, good or bad in your life, shaped you the most?
Speaker 1:I think growing up in a big family and trying to find your place in the world in a big but a poor family, yeah, and it's trying to find your place in the world when it's not obvious.
Speaker 2:And although I think my parents did their best, I didn't grow up feeling safe yeah and it's I think that's the biggest challenge is finding safety so if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1:oh, don't sweat the small stuff. It really, really doesn't matter. And don't worry about the boyfriends, you'll be fine by yourself what is your non-writing tip for writers?
Speaker 2:it could it could be take up zumba oh, it is.
Speaker 1:it is get on down and include the hips in any movement that you do, because you store a lot of tension there. I think a lot of writers are really cerebral and it's like get out of your head and back into your body.
Speaker 2:Yes, and finally, where can listeners of the conversation find you, marcia Hutchinson online.
Speaker 1:You can find me at marciahutchinsoncouk. That's my website line. You can find me at marciahutchinsoncouk. That's my website. I'm on instagram at marxia m-a-r-x-i-a one. That's the number one. Um I'm on facebook. I've got a sub stack um couch to novel. It's very good. I'm on every. Sorry, I'm just gonna try and decline. That's all right. Sorry about that. Somebody tried to ring me um. I've got a sub stack. So I'm on every single social media platform, but mostly active on TikTok and Instagram okay.
Speaker 2:Well, that just leaves me, marcia Hutchinson, to say thank you so much for being on the conversation.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's been a pleasure, Nadine. It's just wonderful to speak to you again. I've probably said too much. You're such a good interviewer. You get the stories out of people.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to today's conversation with Nadine Matheson. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode featuring more amazing guests. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes and if you'd love to join the conversation as a guest, feel free to send an email to theconversation at nadiemappersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.
