Bethan Roberts in conversation with Cathy Hayward

Come and join us for an afternoon of conversation, between two best selling authers. You are invited to join us in the garden of Sarah Arnett as part of her Artist Open House.

A Short Road to Longbrook.

https://www.saraharnett.co.uk/pages/open-house

A tender story of mothers, daughters and breaking family patterns, from the author of bestseller My Policeman which became the hit film starring Harry Styles

It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them?
Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook… the local institution for the mentally ill. Lillian knows this is all too true, but in a family where secrets run through generations like the rushing waters of the local river, can she bring herself to break the cycle and tell Rachel the truth about her past?

Bethan Roberts has published six novels and writes stories and drama for BBC Radio 4. Her books include The Good Plain Cook, which was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime; My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover (which became a movie starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin); Mother Island, which received a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize; and Graceland, which tells the story of Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys. She lives in Brighton with her family.

Cathy Hayward is a writer, bookseller and manages a creative writing school. She trained as a journalist and edited a variety of trade publications, several of which were so niche they were featured on Have I Got News for You. She then moved into PR and set up a PR agency. In 2022, after having spent a lifetime pottering around bookshops, she bought Kemptown Bookshop in Brighton. The following year she took on joint management of The Creative Writing Programme, the leading independent centre for creative writing teaching in the south-east of England, which is now based at the bookshop. Devastated and inspired in equal measure by the death of her parents in quick succession in 2016, Cathy wrote her debut novel The Girl in the Maze about the experience of mothering and being mothered. It was published in 2021 by a small press and then picked up and republished by Lake Union as The Girl in the Midnight Maze in October 2024. Her second novel The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall was published in May 2026, and The Missing Mother of Rose Cottage comes out in July 2026. She’s currently working on her fourth novel. When she’s not writing (or reading), Cathy loves pottering in other people’s bookshops, drinking tea or wine and going to the theatre. She lives in Brighton with her family.

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Host or Publisher Sarah Arnett