I grew up in Stockport, just south of Manchester. It was quite a good place to be because it was close to some great hills – The Pennines. I really like gloomy, open moorland and there was plenty of that! We were also close to a great park called Woodbank Park which had an old-fashioned museum in it. I think we went there whenever there was a rainy day; that’s what it feels like, anyway! The upstairs was full of stuffed animals with staring glass eyes and a cabinet with an assortment of odd items including some mummified hands. I remember trying to peer round the side to see if you could actually see the hands inside the wrappings. Last time I was in Stockport, the hands were back on display by popular demand! There were also some great little models of different sorts of old-fashioned punishments and a real scold’s bridle. Creepy!

When I was a teenager, I worked behind the scenes at the museum and did some very dodgy cataloguing as I really didn’t know what I was doing! I remember a couple of days when we had to shift mounds and mounds of blocks of wood which were all something to do with making hats. Stockport used to be famous for hat-making. Apparently, a hat factory had closed and all the equipment was going into store. Imagine my surprise when, a few years ago, I visited ‘Hatworks’, the new hatting museum and all those blocks of wood were there! The hat factory had been completely re-created!

I didn’t do lots of story writing, except at my school, Banks Lane, where I had a great time dashing off my ‘week’s work’ and then doing more or less what I wanted! No National Curriculum or SATs then to cramp my style! At home, I had what experts call a ‘rich imaginative life’. That’s a posh way of saying I played with dolls a lot, played endless imaginative games with my friends and got to sleep at night by making up stories – all excellent practice for a writer. I had a duvet cover with pictures of little girls on it so I made up stories about them. They had exotic names like Petronella, Darrell, Theresa, Josephine and Samaris. My favourite was Zoe. That was a pretty unusual name at the time.

Someone once said to me that all successful writers seemed to have had miserable childhoods – had I? She wanted to be a writer and was worried that she was quite happy! Well, my childhood wasn’t unhappy – just rather dull! That’s probably why I spent so much time making up stories in my head. We did a lot of visiting old ladies and having to ‘behave’ – I can’t imagine doing that with my own kids! It was a big thing for us to have ballet lessons – and you certainly couldn’t do ballet and have piano lessons. One of them had to go! I gave up the ballet but didn’t want to; I still love to dance now.

We also did quite a lot of walking in the local hills with my dad. My mum was disabled, which looking back, had quite an impact on our lives. As a kid, I didn’t think about it; that was just how it was. The walking, though, was another opportunity to imagine. I was never just walking – I was always some great explorer, forging through some unexplored territory. Thinking back, I seem to have spent half my life in a world of my own. Even playing ‘two-balls’ against the garage door (I must have done hours of that) I was some great circus performer or Olympic ‘two-balls’ champion and running (late!) to school, I was always some great bare-back rider.

I did read but not as much as you might expect for a budding writer and a lot of it was pretty trashy. I was a big fan of ‘The Chalet School’ books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Her heroines seemed to be forever giving birth to twins or even triplets and I sometimes wonder if I got seriously warped by it all and that’s why I ended up having twins! I also really liked Malcolm Saville, Anne of Green Gables, Noel Streatfield, the Heidi books, Joan Aiken and Laura Ingalls Wilder to name but a few. Later on, I had a huge craze for reading Georgette Heyer novels. They seemed like Jane Austen but easier to me! On TV, I loved all the great costume dramas. ‘Poldark’ on TV made me read all the ‘Poldark’ books by Winston Graham.

Secondary school is a bit of a dull blur. My best memories are of the great time we had on the school bus and the car-chases we did to catch it! Like me, my dad was always doing things at the last minute so, although the theory was that he drove us to our school bus-stop, the reality was that we were usually late and had to chase the bus through the streets of Stockport, trying to get one stop ahead of it! Sometimes Dad had to give up and just take us all the way to school!

I still wasn’t doing much writing, although by then I knew that some day I wanted to write children’s books. There always seemed to be too much homework. But I did keep diaries, usually when I was in love, so they’re hideously embarrassing to read now. They got very melancholy when I was doing A-levels, partly because I was having to read far too much war poetry and partly because I think that’s a fairly common phase when you’re growing up! If you’re going through it now, hang in there! It does get better.

I’ll stop there. I still don’t feel very grown-up but I guess when you’re 43 you’re meant to be, at least.

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