Malta was a rather quirky choice, and we were staying — surprise — in a fishing harbour. I still recall the man in the apartment next to ours who smothered himself in coconut butter every day; he was the colour of mahogany. This being the early 1970s, when nobody worried about skin cancer, I decided I wanted to be that colour, too. I’ve adored being warm and in the sunshine ever since.
The first time I went to Greece was with my mother and sister, when I was 17. We were to start off in Athens, and I got very excited about seeing the Parthenon and all the wonderful classical sites, but, of course, we ended up getting some horrendous flight that got us in at three in the morning and all we saw was the end of the runway of the old Athens airport from the window of our hotel. I’d hardly gone to sleep when I was woken by the unbelievable noise of reverse thrust outside my window. To be fair, one side was runway but the other side was beach, so it wasn’t all bad.
Then we went to Paros and I saw for the first time the quintessential Greek harbour scene, with the cluster of startlingly white buildings against a sea and a sky bluer than you seem to get anywhere else. That’s where I fell in love with Greece. There was, and is, something easy and unchanging about the islands. As a teenager, I was aware of the hassle that three women travelling together can generate — my mother was often mistaken for our older sister — and it just wasn’t there on the islands. So it was instantly relaxing.
I suppose I’ve been to Greece 30 times now — my first holiday with Ian was to Kos — and the islands still deliver what I want from them.
When we had children, we began going to Mark Warner clubs, and still do — we’ve just returned from San Agostino on the Greek mainland. We’re quite a sporty family — Ian and I play a lot of tennis — and the setup encourages the children to attempt things they might not without a peer group. They make very intense friendships and try their hand at activities such as water-skiing — another family passion. William wakeboards now, and it’s very annoying to see the kids getting better than us. The only downside to Mark Warner is the fact that you’re away with English people, speaking English; okay, you don’t eat English food, but it is a very home-counties experience.
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My novel resulted from one of those holidays where you try to mix beach time with some culture and activities, to keep everybody happy. We were on Crete and we’d done most things — Knossos and the palace at Malia, which is phenomenal, and all the Byzantine churches that Ian loves — and we were looking for an excursion that might interest the whole family. I came across a trip to the island of Spinalonga, a former leper colony, which is now a museum. So we went to the little village of Plaka, where we took a small fishing boat across. We paid our entrance fee and wandered around and, although I’d never intended to write a novel at all, by the time we left a couple of hours later, I knew one of the characters was called Maria and I had the core of the story.
My next novel is set somewhere in Spain, so we went to Seville at Easter for Semana Santa, which was a marvellous spectacle. We also went to our first bullfight, although without the children. I found it quite upsetting, as much for the way the horses get attacked as for what happens to the bull: they have a way of goring under the padding. And after six kills, I felt I rather had the idea; one would probably have done. Even so, I think I have fallen for Spain, too, so much so that on grey, rainy days in England, I fantasise about moving there, or anywhere warm, in fact.