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paralysed down one side and unable to speak. My granny collapsed on the stairs and clutched hold of the banister. My Aunty Jane, Mum’s elder sister, who was 17 at the time, screamed, ‘Go get my daddy!’ He worked about a mile away. Mum ran along the road as fast as her legs would carry her and returned with my papa. Granny was taken to hospital.
    Granny had always done all the washing and cleaning, and when she was recovering from the stroke, the rest of the family had totake over. My papa was working long hours and my mum’s two elder sisters were at the age where they were out a lot with boys. Mum felt that she had to learn to do everything for herself, and also help look after her two younger brothers. One day, a couple of years later, the schoolteacher took her aside and told her that the ribbons in her hair were dirty, and that even though her mum was disabled she was old enough to take better care of herself. While this was well intentioned, telling a young girl who is close to puberty that she is dirty is about the worst thing in the world. Through no fault of her own, Mum developed a deep belief that she was less worthy than everyone else.
    She has also had little self-confidence as an adult, which is not surprising. And building my own self-confidence has been one of my biggest challenges in life.
Parents
    Some parents have very few parenting skills. In the area where I grew up, most of our neighbours were kind and friendly people. But it wasn’t uncommon to hear young children being called all sorts of language that I wouldn’t dare replicate in this book. So often I would hear a parent angrily saying, ‘Dare you look at me!’ or ‘I’ll make you laugh on the other side of your face.’ These words always seemed to be communicated in rage. It would be little wonder if those children grew up to have low self-esteem.
    I grew up in a typical working-class environment. My parents never pushed me towards higher education because no one in our family had ever gone to college or university. It alwaysseemed above us. It was my chemistry teacher, Mr Tracey, who first planted the seed in my mind when I was 16 years old, shortly after I’d received exam results that included an ‘A’ for chemistry.
    When he first mentioned it, my immediate reaction was shock. I couldn’t possibly go to university. I wasn’t intelligent enough and my family didn’t have enough money. These things I knew.
    I also knew, as naïve as it might sound, that there were only two universities in the UK – Oxford and Cambridge. I knew that from watching the annual boat race on TV. You needed to be rich to get into places like that, and posh. Only people like Michael Thom and Paul Tortolano, two very intelligent middle-class boys in my class, could possibly go to university. And maybe Big Vince Kolosowski as well. Even though he was from a similar background to me, he was way cleverer than everyone else.
    University wasn’t the norm in our village. But I had a very positive influence in my mum. Several times when I was growing up, she would say, ‘Stick in at school so you can do well and get a better life than the one your daddy and I have had.’ I heard it so many times. I still hear it today in my head like a mantra.
    So I went to university to study chemistry. The lack of parental pressure on me meant that university was all about learning things that fascinated me. I loved chemistry. I loved learning the structure of molecules and how to build them. I also loved doing calculations in some of my classes where chemistry, physics and mathematics overlapped. I really loved learning.
    I knew one or two girls and boys in some of my classes who were very driven. They were always in the top few per centacademically. They were also the most stressed. The two seemed to go hand in hand. They were rarely satisfied with their performances in exams. Looking back, I’d say