I went through a stage of writing my cramped hand in tiny books. My two sisters and I did have our Bronte period. My mum is from Yorkshire, and we would go up to the Moors. It tapped into our romantic visions of ourselves.

My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!

I'm a dreadful romantic. No matter what I go through in life, I want to fall in love with a man.

I think of myself as a very ordinary person. I like writing about the juxtaposition between people: the beauty of them at times and then the banal, everyday context in which we find ourselves.

I would actually write books totally full of nothing BUT kissing scenes, but apparently people like books to have, like, "plots" or whatever.

For me, writing is such an escape, and I felt very lucky to have this to run away to.