Jojo Moyes

But I think I was also a bit mulish.

I didn't want to do what they wanted me to do.

Yes.

So, yeah, that's how I ended up in words rather than pictures.

And I mean, you grew up in Hackney.

I did.

And it was very different.

What was it like?

My mum used to hate this, but my abiding feeling when I was growing up was not safety.

I was tiny and blonde at a time when to be those things was not the safest.

And so very early on in life, I learned to put my keys through my hands.

When I got off the bus, I got followed home from school numerous times.

We got broken into a lot.

It's funny, you grow up and you kind of absorb all this stuff and it's just your life experience, but it shows up later in life in different ways.

I remember my daughter kind of wearing a short pair of shorts once when she was going out and I said, you can't wear that.

You know, you don't understand what's going to happen if you provoke that sort of response.

And she just looked at me and went, mum, this is Saffron Walden, not Hackney.

It's like, I'm fine.

But I think I was hypervigilant for a long time.

I moved out of London when I was 30 and it just felt extraordinary to me, the safety.