I'm one of those people who always wanted to be an author, from the time at primary school when an encouraging teacher praised my work (a poem, as I recall) and showed it to the headmaster, who framed it and hung it on the wall of his office. I must have been seven years old, and I have been riding on that particular high ever since.

I didn't tell anyone of my ambition until I was applying to University. I asked a family friend (an English Literature lecturer) what course I should do if I wanted to be a writer. He suggested a journalism course. I explained that I didn't want to be a journalist. I wanted to write books. Novels. He looked embarrassed for me. This was 1989, before the proliferation of creative writing courses at degree and post-graduate level. He advised me to study English, and to write in my spare time. I was unconvinced, but followed his advice anyway. I didn't tell anyone else I wanted to be a writer for a decade or two.

So I studied for a BA in English at Leeds University and then for an MA in Media & Communication Studies at Goldsmiths College. During those years of academia, not one word of creative writing was produced in my spare time.

I was in my late twenties, back in London after a spell living in Australia, when I decided I couldn't put it off anymore. I enrolled on a 'starting to write' correspondence course, which culminated in a short story about a woman called Louisa and her daughter, Isla. It was written from Isla's point of view, as she watched her mother packing a suitcase and wondered where she was going, and if she was going to leave her behind. I remember my tutor suggesting it would benefit from a stronger sense of place ...

It was another ten years before that scene was integrated into the novel that became The Silence. Several more years before the novel was bought by Harper Collins. Which brings me to today, living in London with my Australian husband and our children. I’m writing full-time these days, working on my second book and promoting my debut. It was all worth waiting for.