Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Sanjida Kay

Midmorning on a weekday, Hart’s Bakery is packed with people. The queue snakes out of the door and past two friends perching on chairs in a patch of sunshine, while a team of bakers with shirtsleeves rolled up thwack springy dough against a huge table at the back of the room. Sanjida has found a spot in a corner and sips a black Americano, looking completely at home amidst the bustle.

“When I did my tax return about a year ago, I found that almost all my receipts were from Hart’s,” she laughs. “Oh my god, I’ve spent a fortune here!” Sanjida has deep connections to the little bakery under Temple Meads. Not only does she often sit and write here but she has also immortalised Hart’s – albeit a fictionalised version called Kate’s – in her latest novel.

“When I had the idea for Emma Taylor in My Mother’s Secret being a baker, I just imagined her working here,” Sanjida explains after breakfast has been ordered. “I asked the guys here if they would help teach me how to become a baker, and they let me come in on a day when they were doing all their prep for the week. It was great – I just hung out and asked them lots of awkward questions!”

Hart’s isn’t the only place in the book that will be recognisable to Bristolian readers. “Quite a lot of My Mother’s Secret is set in and around Bristol,” Sanjida explains, taking a bite of her cheese toastie. “Two of the main characters, Emma and Stella, are part of a family who live in Long Ashton. Emma works here at Hart’s, and I’ve got a scene where the staff go to Cox & Baloney on Cheltenham Road on a night out and get completely trollied on the gin cocktails! There are also a lot of scenes at Tyntesfield: that mansion is just incredible, as are the grounds and kitchen gardens.

It was university that first brought Sanjida to Bristol, to study zoology. Soon after graduating she had her first book published, whilst simultaneously pursuing a career in television. “Looking back on it now, it was really fast, but at the time I wondered why it was taking so long to get published. I’d already written two novels before my first one was accepted,” she says. “I decided when I was five that I wanted to be a novelist, and I did everything I could to make it happen.”

After a stretch in London, Sanjida was desperate to move back to Bristol. “Just as I was at the point of thinking ‘Screw it, I’m just going to move to Bristol’, I got offered a job at the BBC doing wildlife documentaries,” she recalls. In between directing Horizon, Sanjida had four non-fiction books and four literary novels published, writing for two hours each morning before going to work.

“I think if you want to write, you need to carve out the space to do it,” she says. “It’s also about being a professional about it: showing up for yourself and saying ‘I’m going to set aside this much time to write’ rather than thinking you’ll wait until an idea strikes. I think it gets easier as you do it more because you’ve practiced, but it never gets easy or stops being a challenge.”

After her daughter was born, travelling overseas for book research became out of the question, and Sanjida applied for an Arts Council grant to allow her to change direction and focus on thrillers. The success of her first, Bone By Bone, allowed her to commit to writing full-time, and to become more of a part of the community of writers that have made Bristol their home. “It’s nice to be in a city with other likeminded people,” Sanjida says, finishing off her breakfast. “I’ve got a little writing group I meet up with every month, and that’s been the most supportive and helpful thing that I can give back to other people.”

As the late breakfast rush is replaced by the lunchtime rush at Hart’s, and the next huge trays of pastries are rammed into the enormous ovens by the skilled bakers, it’s not difficult to imagine there might be an alternative reality where it’s Emma Taylor who is measuring out cups of flour. If her bread is half as good as that made by Laura Hart’s team, she’ll be doing something right.

My Mother’s Secret launches at Waterstones in the Galleries at 7pm on May 11.

Illustration by Anna Higgie – www.annahiggie.co.uk