One morning in 1952, when I was 12 years old, I left our house to go to school - a convent in Killiney, Co Dublin - and I came home to another. We had moved from a rented place to the first house our family had owned, a smart semi-detached house in the seaside suburb of Dalkey, with five bedrooms and a big rambling garden. The house, which had cost my parents about £3,000, was built around the turn of the last century. It had a view of Dublin Bay, and you could see the boats and lighthouse beams. I was allowed my own room as I was the eldest; there were two girls and a boy after me: Joan, Irene and William. We were very happy there, although the Esse - a poor man's Aga - in the kitchen was always going on the blink, which was absolute misery.
My father was a barrister - though not like one of the rich ones you get nowadays - and my mother had been a nurse. She was more interested in her raspberries and roses than in housework. She had what she used to call her "gardening cardigan", with pockets for secateurs and the like. And when she put it on, she would always be smiling.
We had eight hens in the garden, and I named them after my friends at school - Gillian, Celeste and so on - and they all lived to be terribly old. Eventually, one fell off its perch and my mother took it to the department of agriculture, as she was worried it had fowl pest. The man there laughed so much he nearly had a seizure when he found out the hen was 14 - most die at about the age of two. When he said he would dispose of it, my mother said he couldn't possibly do that, there were children at home choosing hymns for the burial.
My father was very encouraging, and when I went to school he told me that everybody would want to be my best friend. He was wrong, but I didn't care, as I thought I was the best girl in the world. Though I became a teacher, I was as lazy as sin myself - and still am, really. I was not agile, but blessed with a quick mind. I could understand things almost immediately, then I'd switch off. I would stare out of the window, wondering what life would be like when I was a grown-up. I thought I'd be a barrister for about 20 minutes, then become a judge. I could wear a big wig and wouldn't have to get my hair done. I read a lot, but mainly things people didn't want me to read - Peter Cheyney and Graham Greene. All very sexual and brooding.
I went through my schooling, college years and many years of teaching from that house, only leaving after my parents had died, when I was 32. Yet, growing up, we all thought living in Dalkey was a punishment - it was 10 miles from Dublin, and Dublin, for us, was the beating heart of the universe. We had no car, and the last train left Dublin at 11.17pm. Nobody would give you a lift that far after a dance, unless they were promised enormous sexual favours, which we were all terrified to give. We talked about sex nonstop, but there were no transgressions: pregnancy was about the worst thing that could happen. I would have loved to have stayed out, clutching on to some guy and dancing to Dave Brubeck. But I had to be on that train. My father would come and meet me with a torch, as the street lighting went out at midnight. He'd say: "Isn't it great that you're home now?" But it was the last place I wanted to be.
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However, all four of us bought homes in Dalkey. In 1980, my husband [the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell] and I bought a little 1847 house, with moulded concrete features, half a mile from the family home. I used to pass it on my way to school and always liked it. In 1983, when Light a Penny Candle went like a rocket up the book charts, we had enough money to do the place up. We think it's wonderful, but the American tourists who come by on coaches always seem disappointed.
I don't really have any feelings left for the old house - once the people were gone, that was it. Memories are in your heart. I often have this fantasy, though: I'd like my mother to come back to Dalkey for a weekend, so she could see how much it has changed. It is so bijou now, terribly attractive, with all these glittery people living here - Bono and the Edge, Neil Jordan and Lisa Stansfield. It's not the sleepy hollow it was when I was growing up. It's cosmopolitan, with a library and bookshop. You can get food delivered and the Dart, the electric train, comes out to us now.
You change, and you change with a place. But there was a woman I used to see around here when I was a girl, and I used to think she seemed far too old to ride a bicycle. You know, I still see her riding that bicycle.
The Return Journey is published on September 17 (Orion £18.99)