About 

My first published story was in our school magazine. It was a tiny all girls school where cooking and sewing were more important than chemistry and arithmetic. The story was a thriller of sorts about a hired assassin working in London - I have no idea where I came up with the idea, we lived in Scotland in the middle of nowhere.

My first love was fashion (learning how to make a pleated skirt at school was like mastering a magic trick) and, after studying Japanese at university, I worked at Vogue in New York. The next twenty-five years were spent following my husband around the world picking up odd jobs along the way. I was a researcher for Japanese TV quiz shows in London, a medical writer for the pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland, and then founded my eponymous wellington boot label in Hong Kong.

Upon returning to London from a stint in Japan, I enrolled at the Faber Academy where I learnt how to write a novel. 

Painting by Numbers, is set in the 1970s and explores a family in crisis from multiple points of view. When I’m not writing novels, I write pantomimes.