This week sees the release of one of my ghost projects, Off The Beat by Nusrit Mehtab.
As regular followers will know my ‘speciality’ is ghosting strong, female voices — and they don’t come much stronger than Nusrit.
Nusrit grew up in east London to parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, arriving in the capital at a time when the far right was gathering pace on London streets. In one scene in the book, Nusrit describes how, as a little girl, her and her mother barricaded themselves in a telephone box while skinheads kicked at it with steel-capped boots, spitting insults at the glass.
Nusrit grew up on a council estate, not expecting help from the police and yet, when she left university, she found herself applying to join the force. If she thought breaking the news to her mother was going to be hard, it was nothing compared to being a …