Materially, we were privileged because my mother was from a well-to-do family. But she had mental health issues and wasn’t capable of bringing up me and my three siblings. You couldn’t bring friends home because you never knew what mood she would be in.
Nevertheless, my mother was very property savvy. She owned a house in St Mark’s Crescent in Primrose Hill, overlooking Regent’s Canal, where we kept a barge. We kept the ground floor and she rented out the rest.
She also owned flats in Mornington Crescent in Camden Town and a summer retreat in Carnon Downs, a little village just outside Truro in Cornwall.
It was a typical Cornish longhouse with a picture-postcard garden, and we spent our holidays there.
Where was your first married home?
My husband and I rented a three-bedroom mews house behind a large Georgian property in Highgate. Our home was in the garden and we added a swimming pool and chalet.
It was beautiful but then we upsized to a five-bedroom house, also in Highgate. Sadly, we were forced to sell when my husband’s property business got into trouble.
Where else have you lived?
We started a new life in Cornwall and rented a beautiful Queen Anne house in Constantine, near Falmouth, where I ran a restaurant business from home. But it didn’t last long because my husband’s property firm got into fresh difficulties and we lost everything in the 1990s recession.