I trained as a nurse whilst the quiet and gentle man who was to be my husband struggled to pass his electrical engineering exams. He was the sort of man who took 3 months to choose a washing machine and yet asked me to marry him after 3 weeks. He behaved in a way that was totally out of character.  He must have been in love.

Meanwhile I might have looked rather sophisticated ( it was all a pretence!) In reality I was just a lost kid trying to be a grown up.

We were married in 1963 by a charismatic priest in Lancaster Gate and so started the next phase of my life which as I look back seems to be bathed in a soft light. Gone was the uncertainty and insecurity with the shadows of violence of my childhood and there was just a secure future where everything was possible.