Memories of You

My mother, the youngest of thirteen children, was a scholarship girl. At the age of fourteen her parents told her they could no longer afford to keep her at school and that she had to leave and work for a living. She ran away from home - all the way to London where she got a job in a big house. After a while she left domestic service and found work as a 'Nippy' in a Lyon's Corner House. Helen, the heroine of my new book, 'Memories of You', finds work in a cafe in Soho and discovers a new and exciting world. She not only falls in love she makes an entirely new life for herself. So did my mother, make a new life that is. For the difference is that mother came home to Newcastle for a holiday, met my father, and never went back to London. Helen stays and I'm pretty sure my mother would have approved of the way the story ends.