The blue room didn’t start out blue. It’s the only room in our house without a proper name — part office, part playroom, part storage solution. Originally the back of the house, a generous extension by the previous owner left it sandwiched awkwardly between our two busiest spaces: the kitchen-diner and the living room. It lacks natural daylight. But during lockdown, when it became my full-time workspace, I gave it a makeover. Painted in ‘Denim Spirit’, the room now lifts mine.

When I sit at my desk, the garden stretches out to my left. Above me, Lowry’s At the Seaside reminds me to look up and imagine paddling through cold waves. I missed the sea during those quiet months when everything stopped.

Just right of this view, an Aperol spritz print — my favourite drink, also calming in its own fizzy, bright orange way!

On my desk there’s usually a cappuccino from the kitchen coffee machine (also lockdown legacy), and a notebook with Van Gogh’s Almond Blossom on the cover. It mirrors where I am with my fiction — still awakening, beginning to bloom. Inside: scribbled phrases, scene fragments, characters I’m not sure how to name yet.

Sometimes I write in a café. Sometimes I wander around the house, laptop in hand, snatching sentences when the kitchen gets noisy. And when the English weather cooperates — not raining, not too hot, not too cold — I retreat to the garden, my ideal writing space.

I write in bursts. Around work, around my sons. Mostly short stories. I gravitate toward everyday relationships, quiet moments of intimacy, connection or misconnection. I’m always trying to join the dots between people. I love the micro-escapes short stories offer — for the reader, and for me.