It never once crossed my mind to come back here. In fact, I realise now that this is the first time I’ve actually thought about 15 Foster Road, Bloomsbury, since being here in 2010.
It’s like that whole afternoon had been wiped from my memory until now.
That strange sense of unreality sweeps through me: the same feeling I used to get in the watch-seller’s presence. Like I’d slipped off the grid somehow, into a secret corner no one else could see.
‘Can I just check something?’ I murmur.
I walk across the road to the bottom of the little flight of steps that lead up to the bright purple door. The gold number 15 glints sharply in the sunlight.
‘What are you doing?’ Harv asks, arriving next to me. ‘Do you know who lives here?’
‘Not exactly, but—’
Before I can finish the sentence, the purple door opens, and a man and woman step out. They’re about my age, chatting breezily to one another, the man carrying a buggy with a very cute baby in it. They give us a friendly smile as they pass.
For a second, I hear nothing except my heart beating.
‘Did you know them?’ Harv asks.
‘No, I just …’ I stare at the purple door. It’s just somebody’s home. But still, somehow, I know I was here. I know that the watch-seller was real. Because the changes he wrought in me are real.
I glance down at my watch and feel a warm glow pass through me as I see the hands ticking steadily. I fix it back around my wrist.
‘Come on, man,’ I say to Harv. ‘Let’s go home.’
And I turn and walk away, my best mate beside me, under the fading summer sun, back to Daphne, back to the next chapter of our life together.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, a massive thank you to the mighty Emily Kitchin, who is not only a brilliant editor, but also a master plotter, indefatigable great-idea generator and highly skilled de-italiciser. Thank you so much for everything, Emily – I owe you many, many drinks…
Big thanks also to: everyone at HQ, Kirsty McLachlan and all at DGA, Rachel Leyshon, Lucy Ivison, Anne-Sophie Jahn and Ersi Sotiropoulos. Thanks to my parents and my brother. Thanks to my friends, in particular the ones from whom I shamelessly borrowed names, traits, jokes or anecdotes to put in this book. Including but not limited to: Carolina Demopoulos, Harvey Horner, Jeremy Stubbings, Susan Simmonds, Daphne Koutsafti, Robin Pasricha, Rob Ellen, Chris Carroll and Neil Redford.
I wrote big chunks of All About Us at two fantastic writers’ residences in Greece – the House of Literature in Paros and the International Writers’ & Translators’ Centre of Rhodes. Thank you very much to everyone at both, and in particular to Eleftheria Binikou at the IWTCR.
And thank you to Charles Dickens for the loan of his story structure. Thanks, Charles.
Author Q&A with Tom Ellen
Can you tell us about your inspiration for writing All About Us?
I think everyone can relate to those ‘What if…’ moments in life – times you look back and wonder, ‘If I did such-and-such differently, what would my life look like now?’. That was the initial inspiration for All About Us – the concept of being able to actually revisit a few of those moments. If you could go back five, ten, fifteen years, what would you change – and why? Aside from its magical, time-travel elements, though, the book is also a romantic comedy at heart, and I’ve always loved romcoms, so ultimately I just wanted to write a funny, romantic book that encompassed lots of other themes I’m also interested in: family dynamics, grief, toxic masculinity. I should also mention that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was a pretty major inspiration for All About Us, since I – ahem – ‘borrowed’ the basic time-hopping structure from that excellent novel!
Is there a character in the book you connected with most deeply?
Ben is probably the closest to me – in terms of both his good and bad points. Like him, I’m definitely prone to being a bit over-anxious and mawkish, but hopefully I share some of his more positive characteristics too! Aside from him, though, the character of Daphne is based on my girlfriend, and Ben’s best mate Harv is a kind of amalgam of lots of my closest friends, so I definitely connected to those two very deeply as well.
Do you have a favourite scene in the book – past, present or future?
I really enjoyed writing the early chapters when Ben wakes up to find himself back in the past for the first time. It was fun to channel that feeling of what-on-earth-is-happening-here craziness as he realises he has somehow jumped back fifteen years. Plus, that section is all set at the University of York – where I studied – so it was very nostalgic to write about drinking Snakebite Black in the college bar, playing Sardines in the campus maze and acting in (usually extremely poor quality) student plays – all things I genuinely did during my time there!
Some of the scenes between Ben and his mum are hugely emotional. How did it feel to write those?
I loved writing them. I hope they come across as moving and tender, but I also wanted them to be humorous, as I think Ben’s mum is one of the funniest characters in the book, and I really enjoyed writing her dialogue for that reason. Those scenes were also some of the most difficult to write, though, because it’s so tough to imagine how you’d feel if you’d lost someone you were so close to, and then you were miraculously given the chance the see them again one last time! I wanted Ben to be completely overwhelmed by this bittersweet sensation of seeing his beloved mum again, but also of being reminded how much he misses her now she’s gone.
The theme of toxic masculinity, and of how men don’t
