Maggie O’Farrell

And I said, this was a moment which I stammered really badly.

And she said, you need to look that woman in the eye and you say, I have a stammer.

And she said, I want you to practice it now.

Say it to me.

And so I said, I'm sorry, I have a stammer.

And she said, no, no, don't apologize.

Just put it out there.

And she said, if the woman in the prochemist can't cope with it, that's her problem.

But you tell her, be upfront about it.

And it was, I mean, it's such a simple piece of advice.

But I think, you know, as a child and as a teenager, you become so used to hiding it and so used to thinking, I need to conceal this from people because people might find out I have a stammer.

You know, it took me until I was 41 for someone to say, it's okay, just tell people.

Well, I think I moved from Wales to Scotland when I was about 13.

And where I lived in Wales, everybody I was at school with knew that I had had this very serious illness and that I had been off school for a really long time, I mean years, and that I'd returned and I'd been quite different.

And I think I thought of that move as a chance to start again.

So it was always very conscious.

I was always conscious that everybody knew that this terrible thing had happened to me.

And I knew that if I moved countries and I moved schools, that I could just pass myself off as somebody who was just not very good at sport.

And I thought I could do that.

I could just completely start again.