'I Wrote online, on forums and blogs. I wrote in notebooks and on scraps of paper, and in fevered, unfinished documents on my laptop. And as I wrote, I mended'

Bestselling author and new Cheshire Life columnist Clare Mackintosh tells the story of her life today… and her journey getting there

- Clare Mackintosh

I scrape the cake batter into the tin and hand the spoon to my daughter. She may be a short shrug away from teendom, but we’re all a child inside when there’s cake mix on offer. I have a sudden, visceral memory of baking with her almost a decade ago, in a different house – a different world. I watch her, the memory a lump in my throat.

She looks up. “What?”

I put the cake in the oven. “Nothing.”

I don’t recall the cakes we made that day something sickly, something pink, no doubt – but everything else is engraved on my heart. I remember the frustration as my daughter made a mess I’d have to clear up. I remember wiping sticky hands on a Cath Kidston apron; watching the clock, simultaneously longing for work, and dreading it. I remember passing the baton of parenthood to my husband. One in, one out, like multi-storey car parks at Christmas. The ever-present buzz of my Blackberry. Sorry, I know it’s the weekend, but…

Four hours later I was standing at a sports stadium on the outskirts of Oxford, sweating in a helmet and fireproof boiler suit, calling for more resources as football hooligans threw bricks at my officers. Beneath our feet lay a carpet of crushed glass, as though the tarmac were dusted with sugar.

I loved my job. I’d joined the police in 1999 on what was known then as the High Potential Development Scheme, navigating the suspicion with which all graduates were viewed, and more than earning my stripes. I sat my Inspector’s exam five months pregnant with twins, already too vast to squeeze into the combination chair-desk provided. I was ambitious, driven, and good at my job. There was nothing I’d rather be doing.