It took a liftetime to understand Mum's BEHAVIOUR

Anna Wilson always thought her mum was super-glamorous and fiercely intelligent, yet with hindsight she never really fit in

- HILARY FREEMAN

My mother’s favourite saying was ‘There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place’. It was the mantra that she lived and ruled by. She was fastidious about meal times and tidiness, and if things were messy or if something didn’t go to plan, she’d fly off the handle and have meltdowns, like a toddler.

To me and my sister, Carrie, she was just Mum: a super-glamorous, fiercely intelligent woman, with an incredible memory for historical facts. She was also an excellent Latin teacher – at the same grammar school she had once attended. It’s only in hindsight I can see things at home weren’t quite ‘normal’. But it would take until almost the end of her life before we were given an explanation for her odd, often erratic behaviour.

Socially, Mum just didn’t fit in. At the school gate, she couldn’t understand the social mores or the small talk and it used to make her anxious. Sometimes, she’d be brusque with people and say, ‘I think you’re talking nonsense.’

As a result, she didn’t have girlfriends. Her only real friend – apart from my father, who adored her – was her own mother. She’d say, ‘I can’t think of anything worse than spending time with a groupof women. They use a lot of words to talk about stuff that’s not important before they ever get to the point.’ She was baffled by how women navigated the world.

Men were more straightforward. Mum found it hard when we were teenagers who left our wet towels on the floor and no longer stuck to the routines she needed. She wasupset when, after Cambridge, instead of coming back home as she had, I moved to London, and later around the country with my family.