I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.

The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.

Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future.

I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end.