My childhood

I think my first memories start when I was about three or perhaps four years old. I remember falling from a tree and breaking my arm. I think I was playing in the garden of the big, old house we lived in. It was in a suburb of London. I can also remember starting school when I was five. There was a little boy called Thomas in the same class. He used to pull my hair when the teacher wasn't looking. One day I hit him over the head with a book and he began to cry. The teacher was very angry with me. I remember him saying: "Little girls don't do things like that!" But Thomas never pulled my hair again.


Even though I didn't have any brothers or sisters, I had a happy childhood. I don't remember feeling lonely or anything like that. I had a lot of friends. But I had to leave them all when I was eight. My father worked for a big international company and they sent him to Chicago, in the United States. Naturally my mother and I went with him. At first I didn't like Chicago at all. The winters were terribly cold and the children at school there laughed at my "funny accent". But after a while I got used to my new life and began to enjoy it very much.

We stayed in Chicago for six years. Then the company sent my father back to London and I had to get used to living in England all over again. I also had to think about what I wanted to do later. I remember a teacher asking us once what our ambitions were. I was sixteen at the time. Most of the girls in class said they wanted to get married as soon as possible or to get jobs as secretaries. I don't remember exactly what I said. But one thing was clear to me even then. I didn't intend to be a housewife or a mother. And I certainly didn't want to spend the rest of my life behind a typewriter either. I wanted some kind of career but I didn't know really what it was.