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As a child, I'd help my mum cook, and it was ridiculous - she had the correct gadget or utensil for everything. 'Stop! Don't use that, I have exactly the right utensil.' After I left home, I survived on cup-a-meals and never saw myself as being like her. Now I've become her.

I used to watch my mother cooking when I was a child; she influenced me a lot.

My father was a chef but hadn't owned his own business. I didn't like that. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted to be in business.

All my family were brilliant cooks when I was growing up, but I ended up just cleaning up, so I've always lacked confidence in the kitchen.

My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.

When I first started cooking, I was very much an intuitive cook when it came to taste, but that didn't mean I didn't want to know why some things worked and why others did not. My interest took me to culinary school.

When I started to write culinary mysteries, I did it because nobody was doing it anymore.

Both my parents worked. So it wasn't like the previous generation where we learned how to cook and bake from our mothers and grandmothers.