When I was fourteen, my mother’s increasingly erratic behaviour had eventually led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and she was put into a residential home for the mentally ill. Her inability to cope with day-to-day living had meant her option of remaining independent and ‘caring’ for me had become untenable. It was at this point that I went to live with her estranged aunt for a few years, before going to uni. My grandparents were dead and my mother had no siblings; my father was out of the equation, and his miserable family had severed all ties with us after he left. Aside from foster care, I had really no other choice. At least she was a relative.

Auntie Jane had never married and lived alone in the little terraced council house where she was raised, on the outskirts of Birmingham. She had lost her childhood sweetheart, Gordon, in the Battle of Dunkirk, and never really got over it. She was very old-fashioned in her views, and vociferous in her disapproval of the behaviour of modern youth. I don’t suppose I was her ideal house guest. I had been self-sufficient for many years and resented being told what to do and when to do it. We rubbed each other up the wrong way, and there were endless arguments about how I should conduct myself, what I should wear, what time I should be home after a night out. All the usual adolescent rebellion stuff. My mother had gone off the rails in her teens, and I think from the outset her aunt was worried that I would finish up in a similar predicament. I almost did.

We had what I’d describe as a very shaky first twelve months together, and thinking back, my behaviour was probably enough to try the patience of a saint. Finally freed from the burden of my mother’s care, I felt like a caged animal liberated for the first time. For an elderly woman with no experience of raising a child, it must have been a nightmare. But in spite of everything, we muddled through somehow, and with Auntie Jane’s constant emphasis on the importance of a good education and how it could open doors, I started to knuckle down and work hard at school. I was determined not to let my formative years drag me down and ruin the rest of my life. Despite feeling irked by Auntie Jane’s constant, repetitive reminders of how I should speak and behave, I found myself gradually conforming to her ideal of what a young woman should be: studious, well read, well mannered. Almost a throwback to a repressed 1940s teenager who had stepped straight from childhood into the finished adult version. In a word: boring.