"The author’s new novel centres around an elderly couple bound in a suicide pact. Watching her parents age, the subject of dying with dignity is never far from her mind ... That, in a nutshell, is the genesis of my new novel, Should We Stay Or Should We Go. A nurse and GP in the NHS, Kay and Cyril Wilkinson have treated numerous patients eroded by ageing’s remorseless decay. After Kay’s father finally dies in a state of ruinous dementia, the couple are determined to avoid the same grim fate. Having concluded, like Jolanta, that beyond the knell of about eight decades life is all downhill, they make a pact: once they’ve both crossed that threshold on Kay’s 80th birthday, they’ll kill themselves. They’re still in their early 50s, and this prospect seems a long way off."