Does this woman, with not a smudge on her shoes or hair out of place, have a sweetheart, a man (or perhaps a woman?) who she is pinning all her hopes on? Thinking that there is nothing more hopeless in this world than never finding someone to love? Or does she have secret longings to be a chorus girl, like those who dance each night at the Moulin Rouge in Paris? Does she sing in the bathtub and once dreamt of swimming in a sea so clear it was as if you could simply reach in and scoop up a handful of sand from the ocean’s floor?

Mum told me once about how she’d been offered a job during the war, but her own mother made her turn it down. Said she needed her at home, not off gallivanting around Whitehall. When she told me, she was standing by the back door, cup of tea in hand, simply staring out at nothing. Or maybe she was thinking of what her life could have been if only she had dared to say yes.

Everyone has their secrets, their private stories they dare not to tell. But I want to tell them all. I want to create worlds within worlds. Have people talk about my books, rip them apart, try to understand the motivations behind what I’ve written. Love them, hate them, but make them remember me for something, anything. I have no desire to live an ordinary life.

Somewhere in this carriage a baby is crying. I can hear his little sucks of breath, the softer shush by his mother. I saw them when I first boarded the train. He was all milky newness, with tufts of blond hair and blushing cheeks, one hand stuffed into his mouth, the other wrapped tight around his mother’s curls. She looked exhausted and confused. As if she’d woken up one day in someone else’s existence.

I think that’s what happened to Mum. I never got the chance to ask what she used to dream of when she was young. Before she got married. Before I was born. I don’t want to end up like her. Staring out of the window, with my hands covered by the bubbles in the sink, wishing upon wishing that I had lived a different kind of life.

Has she found the letter I left? Propped up against the teapot on the kitchen table where it would be seen as soon as she came in to start Dad’s breakfast. She knew, at least I think she must have suspected, when she saw my yellow suitcase tucked under my bed. Or when I refused to talk to Henry, his mother, anyone at all, about wedding plans. When I argued with Dad about wanting to be more than someone’s wife, someone’s mother. That I would rather be poor and happy than rich and alone, trapped by the misery of boredom.

I want to live a different life, write a different story. I’m still young, I can be someone other than who my parents expect me to be. There’s still time to change my world, my future. Nothing more than my passport, this diary and a pocketful of hope to help me along my way. And I will not stop until I have a whole lifetime’s worth of memories to keep me going when I’m old and gray.