The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife

Inspiration

The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife was originally written for Round Two of the 2007 SlingInk Eurofiction Competition. The prompt used was "Write a story about trust". Under its original name of The Great Gandolfini and His Wife, it was placed 31st equal out of a total field of 57. The (unnamed) judge commented that it was "compelling and thrilling once it's going. The opening feels a little stumbling."

Placings

After a change of title to avoid images of large American actors swaying on tightropes, The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife came second equal in the 2008 City of Derby Writing Competition, judged by Alex Keegan.

Broadcasts

The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife was subsequently chosen as one of the three stories to be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as part of the 2010 Opening Lines season. The producer was Gemma Jenkins and the reader was Laurel Lefkow.

Notes

I think if you're going to write a story about trust, you can't really go far wrong with a tightrope walking couple as the protagonists. I did more research on this story than almost any other that I've written, in that I did actually do some. In the course of this, I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of exceptionally bonkers people around. The most important aspect of the research was to pick up one or two crucial technical aspects, such as the concept of a "magic box" and the importance of the big toe. These were sufficient to con the audience into thinking I was an expert, rather than someone who'd spent a couple of hours on Google.

I'm slightly disappointed with the change of the husband's name from The Great Gandolfini to The Amazing Arnolfini. I should have thought a bit harder about this, frankly because naming someone after a gallery in Bristol isn't a lot better than an overweight American actor. The origins of the names of the two banksmen (a term I invented, incidentally) may be of interest. Upshaw is named after Dawn Upshaw the Soprano (of Gorecki's third symphony fame) and Fentiman is named after the eponymous brand of designer beverages. It's only just occurred to me that if I'd stuck with The Great Gandolfini, I would have ended up with two Sopranos in the story.