My mum suffered badly from depression and was on prescription medication most of the time. Her moods were extreme. I remembered the high phases, lying rigidly awake half the night to the sound of her pounding the floor, sometimes talking to herself, or singing along loudly and tunelessly to her music. I would hear the songs of David Bowie and T.Rex pulsating through the walls, perhaps an attempt to transport her back to a happier time, before her wildly fluctuating emotions dominated her existence. Sometimes she would clean frenetically, oblivious to the noise she was creating, opening and closing doors, switching on the vacuum cleaner. The lows were worse. My abiding memory was of trying to rouse her from her stupor, to encourage her to leave her bed, where she would lie for days on end; to coax her to eat or drink something. Thinking back, the situation was pretty intolerable for a child.

Mum’s moods, and our life in general, were unpredictable and chaotic. She was fundamentally a decent person; I firmly believe that. But her illness too often eclipsed the positive aspects of her character. I became necessarily acquainted with the functions of various household appliances from a very early age. My clothes were dirty and shabby, and my wardrobe was woefully limited. In the lower school, I had been the smelly kid in the class, the odd one out, shunned as a games partner; the grubby little girl nobody wanted to sit next to. Kids being what they are, one bright spark latched on to my name and dubbed me ‘Stinka’, and of course the name stuck.

My toes curl now as I remember one occasion when, not long after starting school, our class was taken, a few children at a time, into the school hall to inspect items of lost property that had accumulated. Everything had been laid out on trestle tables, and we all filed past to see if any of the things displayed were our misplaced belongings. Not fully understanding the object of the exercise, I helped myself to a pair of gloves, a coat and a bobble hat that took my fancy. The teacher recognised the items as belonging to other pupils, and I was made to hand everything back, much to the tittering delight of my classmates.

But in the brief periods when Mum was more ‘normal’, she was meticulous, almost a germaphobe, and very particular about me bathing, cleaning my teeth, putting on fresh underwear and socks. I liked the novelty of smelling of soap and talcum powder. It was then I realised the importance of keeping clean, and tried my best to be presentable in the vain hope that I would eventually fit in. My clothes were washed and ironed, albeit not very well, and I learned to shop unprompted for provisions and prepare basic meals before the age of ten.