I arrived in London for the first time on 5 October 1991. It was a Saturday, and the station concourse at Paddington was crowded with people rushing this way and that. I remember that I glanced instinctively up towards the vast glass ceiling as soon as I stepped off the train, searching for any remaining signs of the IRA bomb that had gone off in there a little under eight months previously. There were none – everything had been patched up – and I made a mental note to let my folks know when I next called them.

All I had heard for the past few months, you see, was scaremongering about how dangerous London was, and how terrorists were intent on blowing up the entire city and everyone in it. I wanted to reassure them that I was safe, but underneath that was a need to prove them wrong, too. I had insisted on taking this trip – no, strike that – I had pleaded and begged that they let me go. No way was I going to end up running home to New Zealand like they – and every other blighter – assumed I would.

There is something you should know about the eighteen-year-old me before we go any further with this story. That girl was impulsive. Now, you may think that’s a good trait, but when you couple it with naivety, which I also had by the bloody shovel-load, then it becomes slightly more problematic. My folks knew this, of course – they suspected that my desire to go on a big adventure would only get me so far, before my lack of experience caused me to screw up in some monumental way. Either that, or homesickness would get the better of me.

In the end, of course, it was a combination of both those things – but I have never regretted a minute of it. I wanted to make that clear from the outset, before I tell you the story of what happened, because I know what you must think of me. Hell, I bet it’s nothing I haven’t thought about myself over the years. But the truth is, even after everything that went on, and all that I have gone through since, I would not change a single moment of it.

And that’s because of you.

Bonnie paused, her pen hovering above the page as she read back over the words she had just written. Was she coming across as too flippant? Should she take out the word ‘bloody’ and replace it with something less crass? Then again, she mused, wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to show her daughter who she really was – and didn’t she use swear words on a daily basis, some far worse than the innocuous ‘bloody’?