Matt Haig

If we'd been naughty, she would stand in the doorway.

We'd see this big silhouette of my nan.

She'd be holding a wooden spoon.

not actually to use it on us, but to sort of look threatening and menacing in the doorway.

But she was a great, kind person in lots of ways and very strong-willed.

And I have lots of very happy memories.

Was she a widow?

She was never divorced, but she separated from my mum's adoptive father.

They had a very difficult marriage.

He was a farmer.

I don't think he was ever fully on board with the adopting.

So there was all kinds of problematic things.

And I think my mum herself, as well as having the insecurity of being adopted, she also saw a lot of domestic...

I mean, he was a farmer with a gun and I think at one point he threatened my nan with a gun and he was drank heavily and yeah, there was a lot of stuff.

Very aware of it.

My mum, I think, has had lots of insecurities about that.

And when I was born, my mum had postnatal depression for quite a while because she still had it when my sister was born three years later.

Yes, and I know all this because she gave me to read.

She had one of those five-year diaries, and you'd read sort of like the same day in 1975, 1976, 1977, and she'd be in roughly the same situation and having to call my dad from work because she couldn't look after me and things like that.

My mum's still here, and she's called Mary, and...