After a school career distinguished only by stupid amounts of GCSEs and A-Levels (there wasn’t much else to do), I left the small Derbyshire village where our family had somehow fetched up, and travelled through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt before going to Manchester University for a degree in Middle Eastern studies. This left me, my careers advisor informed me, with two possible career paths – arms dealer or spy. Neither appealed, so I moved to Bath with my husband Dan (also a journalist) and found a third option – data entry in a cardboard box factory.

We then moved to London and I staggered through a succession of further horrific McJobs before deciding I wanted to write. I took out a huge loan, jacked in my job, and did the three-month journalism course at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communications). Less than two weeks after leaving, I had a job on the health pages of Take a Break, the UK’s biggest selling women’s weekly, and I’ve never looked back. I now work from home as a freelance writer full-time.

In 2006 I had my son, Louis. Thanks to him, my writing has taken a new path. My personal experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder following birth, postnatal depression and bonding issues have convinced me that not enough is written about these issues.

When I’m not working, I’m playing with Louis, watching films, obsessively levelling on World of Warcraft, arguing with strangers on forums, camping, cooking, listening to everything from Johnny Cash to LCD Soundsystem and wondering where all the time goes.