At Passaporta

Last summer I struggled with three ideas for my next novel and finally decided to carry on with Kata - the sequel to the first volume on Katalin Karady's life. It was tricky, for I had to ask my family for permission. If I kept my mother and the rest of the family as characters, we would have to think about the more recent past, the years of Stalinism before 1956, some dark and too painful memories. One of my sisters said yes, the other was undecided and we let my mother decide, who simply said: NO. Let the past rest as it is.

So, the sequel will deal only with Kata's life in exile. I am following in her footsteps, now in Brussels, where she spent seven months before getting on a cruzer starting a week-long voyage to Brazil.

Bruxelles surprised me. The vivid bilingalism, the art and religion. The number of art neaveau houses I saw is just amazing. I am staying at Passaporta Writers Centre in a cosy studio.

I sat in the Abbey Notre Dame de la Cambre on Good Friday near Kata's home in Ixelles.

and visited the environs, a park with a lake and wrote,

for the first time in her voice. I feel that this will be a story of letting go, the gradual giving up a past, embracing silence.

My research is supported by an Arts Council of NI artist international development grant, and I visited the Magritte Museum, the Liszt Institute and the Maison Hongroise. The Liszt Insitute has an exhbition on: "Sacred Structures" by Peter Puklus.

At the Hungarian House I met Rumbold - Molnar Eszter, and we had a long discussion about "The Little Hungarians", the thousands of children who were fostered in Belgium between 1923-1927. Kata spent time in Holland, organised by the Red Cross and the Caritas, and must have travelled through on her way.

There is a vitrine of this in the Migration Museum - stories of children who eventually stayed, having lost contact with their families in Hungary. Saturated with art and faith, I am ready move on.

Now on to Budapest.