From the BEST to the WORST OF TIMES

A love of writing sustained Jessie Keane when tragedy struck her family

When I was three, my Romany grandma, who lived in her barrel-topped wagon behind my parents' house, looked at my hands and said, 'She's got a writer's fork. She's going to be a famous writer.

Her daughter, my mother, having never read a book in her life, laughed indulgently. We lived a comfortable, Larkin-style Hampshire life, semi-rural, with chickens, and she was a mother to eight kids. My father was a successful engineer, running his own company. He wasn't a Romany - they'd met by chance at a barn dance. I suppose we were rich. My father had a driver called Monty and our house was lovely, set in large grounds.

I was five years old, the youngest of the brood, when this picture was taken at the local Church of England primary school I attended; I always rushed home in the lunch hour to check my flock of hens. I didn't expect to enjoy school, but I was fascinated by the brightly coloured rows of the letters of the alphabet, and there were books in a small library. I dived into them head first, losing myself in fictional worlds.