I’m commonly asked in interviews, ‘If you weren’t a writer, what would you do?’ The answer is: restoring old buildings.

For many years, restoration was my passion. I ran a business buying, restoring and selling on cottages, and both of my homes were large-scale restoration projects; they are unrecognisable now compared to when we bought them. Here’s our home in Kent, a rectory:

For me, old properties are beautiful: full of history and romance. I like to take an unloved, derelict building that was a warm and cherished home in its day and bring its back to former glory – while adding my own, modern twist.

‘Write about what you know’ is the old adage. So I could not resist bring my love for restoration to bear in The Echoes of Love. My hero, Paolo, has made his home in the Tuscan countryside in the very ultimate of ‘Grand Designs’.

The house, which has called La Torretta, was a burnt-out shell, abandoned after a great fire that killed the last owner, an adulterous opera singer. The downturn in the market coupled with rumours of hauntings meant no one had been interesting in purchasing the property, despite the price tag standing at less than a quarter of the original market value.

But then Paolo happened across the house, and in pure romantic style he fell in love with it:

One stormy afternoon, as he was driving aimlessly around the countryside, the damaged turret of the house had loomed out of the clouds in the distance like a mirage. Curious, he had gone in search of the house and had found it without great difficulty. The dwelling, which he could see had been partly destroyed by fire, was almost a ruin and was set in twenty-five hectares of untended land. The property stood in solitary desolation four miles away from the first house in Cala Piccola, and it had a large ‘For Sale’ sign posted on its rusty gates.

Undeterred by the estate agent’s negativity ‘Because it overlooks the sea, it’s been battered by the winds and the salt. Most of the walls are corroded…’), Paolo bought La Torretta without hesitation. As have I in past renovation projects, he could not help the poignant sadness of this once-beautiful house left to wrack and ruin, and he was also swept up with excitement for how he could make a sanctuary of this lonely pile of stone and tiles.

Vision is everything in renovation, and Paolo began as I always do: with defining the spirit of the place. He changed the name La Torretta to Miraggio:

… because of his first impression of the dwelling when it had appeared to him suddenly in the distance, as though suspended in the clouds; and also because the word reflected more or less the way he felt about himself in those days.  He saw the opportunity as an optimistic sign – a new beginning after the bad fortune life had dealt him. He would rebuild the grand house, together with his life, which at that time seemed to Paolo a great black hole, with only the unknown to look forward to.

I think that any really successful renovation embodies something of the renovator him-/herself, and with Paolo this is certainly the case. When Venetia comes to his home, she reflects:

Miraggio was a name that suited the place well. Hanging on its narrow bluff, it almost hovered in the void like an imaginary vision. Paolo’s precarious home in the clouds seemed fitting for a man robbed of his past, a hunter of memories who, without an identity, could neither live comfortably in the present nor plan for the future.

The young woman gazed down in sheer awe at the magnificent scenery below, with the cliffs standing sentinel on each side of the cove. She felt as though, swept up by the sun and the wind above a primitive, surreal world and suspended in the air, she had left behind civilisation to embrace, for some time at least, the uncertain wildness and grandeur of Paolo’s universe.

I wonder what visitors think when they visit my homes, what they see of me. In France, the word ‘colour’ is what characterises my home, especially the gardens – and I think that is reflective of my take on life, my passion, my love for vibrancy and what is beautiful and moving in the world. Here is a picture of my French garden. No doubt you can see easily how, for me, home renovation led into writing romance. Who could not be inspired to dream surrounded by such a profusion of colour created through one’s own vision?