When my mother moved to her bungalow, she off-loaded on me the black bin bag she had been sitting on containing all my childhood sayings and doings. My brother and sister got their bin bags too. Although junior school was a charmed time, from the age of eleven I lived at a boarding school three hours away from home, visiting the house where my parents lived for just sixteen weeks of each year. Amongst the first needlework, the first painting, the first writing, are letters: the ones I wrote and the ones I received over a seven-year stint at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I chose not the best of weeks to open the bag. I was off work with stress, on medication for insomnia, stalked by my credit card companies, and cleaning for a disabled lady I had found after advertising my services in the local post office. Delving into the