The real Bristol of the novel.
Almost everything in Adjacent is a real place. The contamination is not, and neither is Reservoir 17. Everything else you can walk to.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge
On the cover, and in the novel it is where Sarah goes on the second night, because it is where everyone in this city goes when they cannot be indoors. Brunel's bridge is 245 feet above the Avon Gorge and has been Bristol's shorthand for itself since 1864.
The Avon Gorge and the river
The tidal Avon runs brown and fast through the gorge, and the novel makes repeated use of the fact that it looks nothing like drinking water and never has. Bristol's supply does not come from it.
The reservoirs
Bristol's water arrives largely from reservoirs in the Mendips and the Chew Valley — Chew Valley Lake, Blagdon, and the Barrow tanks. Reservoir 17 in the novel is invented. The topology around it is not.
Southville and Bedminster
South of the river, terraced and tightly built, and where much of Sarah's year takes place. Somewhere the city's regeneration has reached unevenly, which the novel notices.
The Bristol Royal Infirmary
Where the first admissions arrive on Christmas morning. The novel does not linger there, and that restraint is deliberate.
The Downs
Four hundred acres of open grass above the gorge. In the novel it is where the inquiry's press pack sets up, because it is the only place with parking and a view of the bridge.
Bristol’s water is safe, and the utility that supplies it is not the organisation in this book. Reservoir 17 does not exist. The Bristol Water Authority of the novel is fictional, as is every person in it. I have been careful about this because the alternative — a novel that reads as an allegation — is not the book I wanted to write, and because the people who run water treatment in this country are doing something difficult and largely thankless.
What is real is the shape of the risk. That part is not invented at all, and it is written down in public documents that anyone can read.
Publication is September 2026.
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