I was worried for a time that, given Mum’s history, I might have a genetic predisposition towards developing a mental illness, but when I finally voiced my fears, Auntie Jane was quick to allay them.

‘Your silly mother dabbled with drugs in her teens. LSD, I believe. It’s common knowledge that it can have an adverse effect on the brain in the long run. No one else in the family ever developed the type of problems she’s had to the best of my knowledge, and even though they’re a rum bunch, I’m sure there’s no history of psychiatric disorders on your father’s side, either. Leave the drugs well alone and you’ll have no cause to worry.’

And I did. Drugs had never appealed to me, and hearing this was enough to turn me off the idea of taking anything mind-altering for life.

Visiting Mum at the home had become an ordeal; she seemed suspicious of me now and refused to make eye contact. She would rant and pace incessantly, sometimes throwing things. Once, she narrowly missed my head with a heavy iron doorstop. The rest of the time she was sleeping, exhausted from her perpetual activity and the amount of medication in her system.

To all intents and purposes, Auntie Jane had replaced her as my family. While she was never demonstrative and our coexistence was not without its tensions, we tolerated one another and I suppose, in a way, I grew to respect her. For the first time in my life, even though she was not without her faults, I had a relatively positive family role model. Before retiring, she had worked in a library, and instilled in me a love of literature and poetry. I found solace and inspiration in the many books she had acquired over the years. It was this influence that led to my choice of degree.

‘You can’t beat a good book, my girl. They take you out of yourself,’ she had told me once. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without my books over the years.’

As I got older, however, I began to feel increasingly stifled under Auntie Jane’s roof. Probably as a result of living alone for so long, she was intolerant of mess and noise, and liked everything to be clean and tidy at all times. She was also pedantic (to the point of being oppressive) about etiquette and grammar, constantly correcting my speech in exasperation (‘it’s different from, Stina, not to’) and reminding me of the importance of creating a good impression when meeting new people, particularly a prospective employer. And how, despite the modern bid for gender equality, deep down a man would always want a woman to care for him and be the homemaker.