You end up in advertising.

Indeed.

I always wanted to write and I was writing all the way along.

But, OK, I was in the careers office flicking through and it was alphabetical.

And my friend arrived, not even kidding.

I remember seeing an accountant thinking, yeah, it's not for me.

And then I got to advertising and my friend arrived and she said, so-and-so's waiting and we're going, you know, we were going to the coast for a day trip out.

I

blag that,

could you? You couldn't.

You really couldn't.

I want to have enough twists and turns that at the end you may think, well, I got that one, but I didn't get that one.

But, you know, whatever, however many you did or didn't get, at the end you think it couldn't have been any other way.

That is the only way that made sense.

I don't know every single beat.

Okay.

Mm.

But perhaps your vocabulary will have increased, which I'm m- big fan of people having precise vocabularies, because I believe the more able you are to articulate what you want out of life, the more likely you are to get it.

And I speak as a Northerner, that, you know, I'm 57, and so things were very different when I was growing up.

The northeast of England seemed a long way ...

Well, actually, really feels like it again.

Seemed a long way away from London and the lives people were living in London.

And even the way I spoke, and my accent, and the words I chose, it didn't help me, um, communicate beyond my own town.

[laughs]

Adele, over to you.

Okay.

So the story is, um, about Amy, who, when she was fifteen, she witnesses her dad murder his mistress.

Ouch.

Because obviously fifteen, very vulnerable stage in our lives, you know, we're just beginning to get out there as y-young adults and maybe start relationships, et cetera.

She's discovered that the first man you're supposed to trust, your father, has done this dreadful thing.

Her testimony sends him to prison for twenty-five years.

[laughs]

Give us a little bit of the premise.

Yeah, OK.

So it's the story of a girl, a teenage girl, that when she's 15, she witnesses her father murder his mistress.

This is obviously... you know, ridiculously traumatic.

We meet her when she's 32.

Her testimony sent her father down.

So she's lived with that.

Do you feel a pressure for each book to be better than the last?

you were the four.

Yeah.

And I'd done the four years research and, you know, and everybody was reviewing them really well.

And anyone who was reading them were loving them.

And then I thought, oh, hang on.

This isn't about me or my books.

It's about what people like to read.

So Adele, before I actually ask you, when you started writing Our Beautiful Mess, was it in your head that this is your 25th book or was it just, I'm just right, it was?

I'm sort of seeing it happen in front of my eyes.

Yes.

Hurrah.

And she, I mean, she lives quite a small world, doesn't she? She works in a noodle bar.

It's a bit yuck.

You don't believe that the cleanliness laws have really been hit at this noodle bar.

You know, she's working because she wants steady income and she wants tips, but she's not doing a passion project here.

How important are pre-orders?

And

it can just be a kind of comfortable place to be.

And I do think, you know, I do a lot with this charity called the National Literacy Trust.

And they work a lot in Teesside, actually.

And I'm a patron of particularly in Teesside.

And one of the things I hear all the time is the difference it can make if you are a comfortable reader, because it's not just about education, which we all know.

And in fact, sometimes that's what puts people off reading.

And I mean, would you say that's sort of a similar theme in your latest book as well? Yeah, so,