

When my two kids came along, I set up as a freelance copy-editor and worked from home.

Then I'd fall asleep over my desk in the afternoon. I used to go to the huge YMCA on Tottenham Court Road at lunchtime and do aerobics classes (very big in the 1980s and yes - I wore legwarmers). My first proper job was in a publishing house, Time Life Books, as a copy-editor. He's still the person I most want to spend time with. We had loads of fights and adventures, but we kept coming back together. At Kent, I fell dramatically in love with the man I'm still married to. At school, I was rubbish at just about everything but English, so I went on to Kent University where I did two degrees in English and American Literature. I never thought ‘I want to be a writer’, but I loved books and writing.

I used my later diaries for the Diving In trilogy. Then, when I turned thirteen, I began keeping a lurid diary, full of adoration or loathing, depending on who I was writing about. My first foray into writing was a series of nasty spells full of rats’ tails and bats’ wings. When I was a child, I wanted to be a witch.
