Always a talking point. Because the lightning gave me a gift. A scar in the shape of a tree, pale branches spreading up my spine and across my shoulder blades, fern-like fronds curling around my neck. The delicate fractal patterns of a Lichtenberg figure, otherwise known as a lightning tree. Google it, if you don’t believe me.

It happened a day before my thirteenth birthday. Lucky for some, you might say. I’d survived, hadn’t I? The newspapers called me a ‘walking miracle’. If only they’d known the truth. I’d wanted to die, just like my mother.

The bolt – a direct strike – discharged millions of volts into my body, bursting dozens of blood vessels and stopping my heart. Death was much closer than I’d realized before. For months, I checked the weather forecast twice a day and ran up Saltbox Hill whenever it rained. But the odds of a second strike were one in nine million.

It never happened again.

For many victims, the lightning tree disappears within hours. Not me. With my colouring, the branches left a permanent imprint on my skin, covering a third of my back. But as the years rolled on and my scars faded, so did the memories. Now weeks can pass and I barely give it a second thought.

Except today. Something happened this morning that brought back that moment on Saltbox Hill when the sky cleaved apart, like my childhood. As I dip fat chips into the runny egg yolks Aunt Peg has cooked – I go home for lunch every Monday, deadlines permitting – I mull it over, a tremor in my fingers.

I was in the newsroom, writing up a story for tomorrow’s paper about a woman who saw the face of Elvis in her potato. Yes, I know. But this was penance for a previous indiscretion that almost cost me my job.

Technically, it wasn’t my fault. A freelancer overheard me talking about my off-the-record conversation with a famous actor’s publicist, who insisted his client would rather ‘eat his wig’ than appear in a film with his ex-wife.

And it was definitely not my fault that same freelancer sold the details of my private conversation to a rival newspaper, who used it in their diary column.

The publicist shouted at me for five minutes and is now refusing to speak to anyone at our paper. That is my fault, apparently, and the potato-face story is my punishment.

Not that I expect anything more. Colin, the news editor, has never warmed to me. He’s that type. His eyes glaze over when I speak. Every time I suggest an idea, he sucks his teeth and says, ‘No, Brinley. That won’t work for our readers.’ I can’t decide if it’s because I’m younger than him, overweight or a woman. Probably all three.

Anyway, I was in the office, and had just typed this Pulitzer Prize-winning line: