After living such a precarious existence for my first fourteen years, in terms of stability and security, my everyday life actually improved after dad went inside. Kudos to Karen Freethy for taking me on actually because, although she'd taught me when I was a gap-toothed child, she really didn't have much of a connection to me. Taking on a teenage girl, especially unofficially and with little financial support, isn't for the faint-hearted but she really stepped up and became almost like a sister to me. I suppose I was grateful to her right from the start so I did try hard not to cause ructions but it actually turned out to be easier than probably both of us imagined.

The first thing that dawned on me was that, after experiencing a lot of chaos, it was actually quite nice to live in a quiet home where nothing much happened. I'm sure a lot of teenagers would have found it stiflingly dull and uneventful but not me. I soon realised that monotony and predictability are underrated when it comes to real life. Karen made the rules very clear from the start, not that there were that many, and we quickly bonded over our mutual adoration of Brian Ferry. Television was trickier; I liked Top Of The Pops and The Young Ones, and she loved period dramas and watching the news, but, because we hadn't had a tv in our house previously, I did tend to get transfixed by whatever was on the screen, and so I'd sit down and watch anything really.

One Sunday night, Karen encouraged me, to join her in watching a dramatisation of 'Rebecca' on the BBC. It was a repeat but I'd never seen it before and I was hooked. Quite quickly, we both developed quite a crush on Jeremy Brett, who played Maxim, and the lounge would be filled with the sounds of two besotted girls staring at the screen, sighing, gasping, and dreamily devouring chocolate biscuits. I sought out the novel and read it, loving the Cornish connection of course and, after mentioning how much I'd enjoyed it to Mrs Norton, she dropped in one day with a boxed set of Daphne du Maurier's complete works, that she'd bought at a jumble sale many years earlier. Some of them were heavy going, and I think quite a bit went over my head but I persevered. I was at an age where the romance and the adventure really gripped me but Rebecca remained my favourite, perhaps because I'd had Karen there to explain the bits of the plot that had baffled me as a fourteen year old girl. And, as a fairly naive young thing myself, I could so relate to the girl falling in love with the sophisticated, mysterious, haunted Maxim de Winter.

I'd only been living with Karen for a month or so, and we were still working out how things should be, when Karen took on a second project. PC Lester Tregurtha had called in almost every day to see how I was getting on and, though previously I'd had little to do with him, I decided that he was actually a nice man with a kind heart, despite looking a little bit like a caveman and talking so slowly that you felt like you wanted to stick a key in his back and give him a good wind-up. Karen seemed to think he was okay too, explaining to me that he lived alone and clearly didn't enjoy cooking for himself, so he stayed on for supper quite frequently and she began to try and improve his diet, for he was a big man, even if he wasn't very tall. This led on to a spot of exercise and, soon, Lester was joining her for her evening walks around town or up on the cliff path. I know she took it easy at the start to encourage him to join her regularly because, as she explained it to me, men don't like to be bested physically by women.

After a while, it was clear that all Karen's ministrations were paying off. Lester was slimming down and even I could see he had a spring in his step. We had a tiny little lawn at the back and he even took over mowing it. On the weekends, they would disappear together, further afield, taking in some of the more rugged terrain and more challenging paths that abounded in North Cornwall. My only thought was how cool it was to have the house to myself until Caroline came over one afternoon and, after spending five minutes in their company, told me I was the biggest plonker in Port Wenn because, to her, they were clearly a couple and were totally shagging.

After that, other than the embarrassment of realising how naive and oblivious I really was, I tended to now give them more of a wide berth. Thinking about how I had hung around them in the evenings, banging on about a load of rubbish, and generally being a total gooseberry, made me cringe with horror. It also dawned on me how little I knew about adult relationships, especially functional and happy ones. So, when Karen offered me her little insights into man management, I was like a sponge. I was so clueless and, to be honest, anything was an improvement on watching my mother alternating between passionately snogging with my dad like a woman possessed, or screaming at him like a banshee, and throwing bottles at him.

I realise now how very discrete both Karen and Lester were because I had honestly never picked up on anything but, now Caroline had pointed it out, I became aware of the warmth between them. But, to their credit, they maintained their facade of stodgy, middle aged friendship and, professional to the nth degree, they kept their personal lives totally hidden away lest it impact on their gauche and foolish teenage charge. At the risk of getting ahead of myself, it was only as I approached my departure to university that they went public with their relationship and, free and unfettered as they finally were, Lester and Karen made plans to leave Port Wenn and experience far-flung places abroad via a volunteer programme called VSO. Although I would miss them, the timing was perfect and I really hoped, because I had benefitted so much from their care, that they would be able to continue being a positive influence on young impressionable people for many years to come. When I'd been considering my career options, Karen's passion for education did influence me quite strongly. I did briefly consider joining the police too, but all I could imagine was being a stressed out detective in some miserable northern city and so I rapidly went off that idea. It seemed to me that I would be happiest as a teacher so, in that way, I was really fortunate to have a personal, live-in careers advisor who was able to provide me with such valuable guidance.

I was still doing well at school; I'd discovered that it was so much easier to stay on top of assignments when you have a warm, undisturbed place to study, and I really appreciated having my own desk in my bedroom, and pens and pencils that didn't constantly disappear. The downside, if you could call it that, was that I now had an adult who would ask me about my workload and what assignments were due, and query me on test results and exam timetables. Often, when I was up late studying, Karen would bring me a cup of tea before she went to bed and, when exam stress hit and I got a bit teary and overwhelmed, she'd slip me a couple of chocolate digestives as well, and give me a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before silently closing the door and leaving me to it. She was right not to fuss because I just became more focused and self-disciplined and, in hindsight, it was actually really good preparation for the pressures of University I would experience later.

At school, let's just say that Caroline was not quite as committed to her education as I was. She was still going out with Tommy Bosman and he, being a couple of years older than us, had left school and was working for a surveyor. Caroline tried to talk it up but it just sounded to me like he was carting all the heavy stuff, like dumpy levels, around the countryside, holding the measuring rods out in all weathers, and banging stakes into the rock hard ground. She had decided he was The One though, although it did seem to Isobel and me that it was a quite one-sided relationship. Still, Caroline was pretty demanding and he put up with it so maybe he cared for her more than we thought. We lived through many a pregnancy scare with her but, fortunately for both of them, it was always a false alarm. We were all relieved when she turned sixteen and was legally allowed to go on the Pill although, as Caroline discovered later when she and Tommy did actually want to have children, she was sadly infertile. By that time, Caroline's parents had set up the radio station for her and Tom, as he was now known, was working as an Estate Agent, and they'd bought a lovely home up past Mrs. Norton's farm. Tom was desperate for a couple of littlies but it was not to be and, tragically, I think it drove a wedge between them; Caroline was never easy but she became quite bitter after that.

As we approached our A levels, Isobel started to lose interest in school. As kids, we'd both had a lot in common; we each lived with a struggling single parent and there was never any thing extra to go around. Isobel's Mum was kind but she was always harried by too many kids and trying to cope with her transient husband who seemed to reappear at intervals, knocking her up again before melting away into the night. Isobel was the oldest and she had to help her mum a lot, and I know she was often quite resentful. She was always envious of Caroline and, after I moved in with Karen, I noticed that she seemed to become a bit jealous of me too. She struggled to find any peaceful space at home to study in so I tried to encourage her to come and study with me but, when she did visit, she spent most of her time telling me how lucky I was and comparing her own situation very negatively. After a while, she gave up on the schoolwork altogether and one morning she just wasn't at the bus stop. Apparently, there was a job going in the laundry up at Hightrees and, without even discussing it with us, she just left school for good. I suppose the lure of a regular wage was too much for her and I understood that, but I missed her nevertheless. She never took things too seriously, and always made me laugh at her ditzy take on life. In that way, she was a good antidote to sarcastic and obstreperous Caroline, and so, when she was no longer part of our tight knit schoolgirl trio, all the dynamics changed and I began to feel just the tiniest bit lonely and left out.

We still saw each other on the weekends but it wasn't long until Isobel, too, got involved with a boy. Caroline had always teased her about her terrible taste in men and had informed me that, without question, Isobel's absentee father was the cause. Caroline and I had been truly horrified when she'd accepted Jimmy Millinger's invitation to a party in Delabole, and we'd been even more appalled when she admitted to her that he'd let him snog her. In fact, as awful as we all knew Jimmy to be, actually their night out had provided us with hours of entertainment as we'd listened in mock horror to her elaborate story of his cold clammy hands, and how he reeked of diesel and cheap aftershave.

After Jimmy, there was John, whose dad was the landlord at the Crab. John was a nice boy but he was always working when she wanted to go out on the weekends, and she was still too young to go into the pub so, sadly for Isobel, it all fizzled out. Then there was a chronically shy young fisherman who, unless he'd had a skin full, could only stammer and bite his non-existent finger nails, leaving Isobel to do all the talking. While she didn't mind making all the conversation, I think he was a bit backward in every other area too so she soon got shut of him as well.

Eventually, she met up again with Robert who had been to primary school with us but whose parents had moved away. I vaguely remembered him and, other than terrible acne, he seemed quite nice. He couldn't keep his hands off her though, which Isobel loved but which I, once again the gooseberry, found embarrassing and awkward. When he hung around with us, he and Isobel were always making little inside jokes and whispering to each other and I felt a bit left out. It was worse when Tommy and Caroline came too, because I started to feel like there was something wrong with me. No one ever asked me out and I always seemed to be just tagging along with my coupled-up friends, like some killjoy chaperone.

Robert had access to a car too which, probably because we were fairly isolated in the village, we all rated as highly desirable in a boy. So, when our half term holiday coincided with Isobel's rostered days off, we had arranged to head to Truro for the day, and Robert was going to drive us. Caroline had been dragged kicking and screaming to see her grandparents so, once again, I was to be the third wheel. Isobel had teased me that Robert was bringing a friend along but I feigned disinterest. Spotty, unsophisticated boys still weren't really tempting despite my feelings of being left out. That morning, I walked up to Isobel's cottage and she and I waited on the road outside her house, as she regaled me with the hilarious and disturbing details of what she had to deal with in the rest home laundry. I was laughing so hard that I didn't hear the car pull up beside us, but I do recall very clearly looking up and seeing a familiar face in the front passenger seat, smirking confidently back at me. I hadn't seen him for a couple of years and he had certainly changed a lot but I would still have known him anywhere.

I gave a little self conscious wave of my hand as the car door flew open and he sprung out on to the pavement.

"Lou!" He cried enthusiastically. "Great to see you!"

"Hi Danny." I said, and grimaced. "It's good to see you too."