Was reading a pivotal part of your childhood?

I was a huge reader when I was a kid! I was in the library rather than the playground at lunchtime. I’ve always loved escaping into a different world.

As I’ve gotten older, I appreciate the value of books – reflecting part of the world to the reader that they might not otherwise have experienced or known first-hand. Books can be a really powerful political tool. What I write about is often political but not in an explicit dogmatic way.

Can you tell me a little bit about Love Me, Love Me Not and how the idea was conceived?

I didn’t set out to write the book the way that I did but the impact of the pandemic shaped the character of Lucy and what she was going through. It ended up becoming a coping mechanism and a way for me to write about being lonely in my 20s. I also wanted to touch on online dating and issues of safety. While I was writing Love Me, Love Me Not, Sarah Everard was abducted, so that was front of mind, too.

Careless was so close to home given you channeled your personal experience of the care system. Did you weave your personal experience into this book?

I definitely did. The core themes started with my experience of feeling frustrated with being in my 20s and trying to find meaningful romantic relationships when the only available avenue was dating apps. I was writing during the pandemic which influenced that even further.

The only way I was talking to and meeting new people was via the internet. I found that it had a detrimental impact on my self-esteem and worth. I started seeing myself through a male gaze, in a way. All women experience their identity differently, but it felt like something that resonated a lot with single female friends. I was living alone at the time, so I was starved of human contact.

Do you think women will be able to identify with Lucy?

I hope so. The character in my first book, Bess, was much closer to an autobiographical character than Lucy is, but I think that with Lucy I wanted to write about universal experiences that women go through — like learning to love themselves and feeling comfortable in their skin. That’s very much the journey that Lucy goes on. In the beginning, she’s uncomfortable in her skin and trying to do the things that she thinks she’s meant to do. She has the perfect job, friends she gets on with (but not really at a deep level), and she has the ‘perfect boyfriend’. In the end, she realises she doesn’t want all of that. She wants to love herself without external validation.

Ultimately, the journey she goes on as a character is learning to love herself and realising what she wants. There is so much around telling us we’re not enough. The media we’re consuming on all fronts is about body image, our facial features and even personality traits. It’s everywhere. It’s really hard to deprogram yourself from that and get out of the matrix.

Are you big on swimming like Lucy?

I’m what you would call a water baby. As a child, I was the first one in and last one out. I grew up right next to the River Thames and I used to kayak regularly. My love of swimming has carried through as I’ve gotten older. I don’t ever see myself not living near water. I take Doug (my dog) swimming too and he loves it.

Swimming makes me feel powerful. The way you have to use your body and the range of motion and physicality of swimming is extraordinary. It doesn’t matter what your body shape is, or your level of fitness. That’s a really empowering thing, especially for women. It felt important that Lucy had something that was hers alone. She has a complex relationship with her family and a crisis of belonging but when she’s swimming the extraneous stuff falls away and she has something to hold on to.