Flowers would be wasted on me. I don't like valentines. I don't need gifts. I'm a pragmatic romantic.

I tried to write about my first marriage in a fictional version but got two pages into it and realised it was too personal. Then I came up with an old-fashioned love triangle, which became the plot for 'Ralph's Party.'

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

My mother was born on February 8, 1944, in Lucknow, India. Her father, Albert, was half-Indian and half-Portuguese.

People say 'chick lit,' and what they mean is 'crap.' And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them.

My mother's childhood was complex, disjointed, and disturbing. As children, we would gather round and ask her to tell us again and again The Story of Her Childhood. It was Grimmsian, Andersenesque: a classic fairy tale replete with goodies and baddies.

I changed my mind about being a famous pop star when I realised that it meant I'd never be able to get on the Tube again.

I don't think my first book was chick lit.

That whole idea of chick lit being a thing that you just lump all the commercial female writers into - it went on for years.I'd switch on the radio, and I'd hear, 'Two female authors are here to discuss chick lit - is it dead?' and I'd think, 'Argh, no, not again. Are we seriously still having this conversation?'

My parents' marriage was, on an aesthetic level, very pleasing to behold.

People with big ideas worry. They lie awake at night and fret as they try to climb up the social or financial ladder. They probably feel proud of themselves for what they've achieved, but I'm proud of the fact that I've done very little - and hence have little to worry about - and I've still got somewhere.

I always wanted to write psychological thrillers.

'Ralph's Party' was a romantic comedy, and at the end of it, the two main characters, Ralph and Jen, kiss for the first time and think they're going to be happy together. Then, 10 years later, I wrote a sequel in which they've been together for 10 years and are about to split up.

I was made redundant from a job as a PA in a shirt-making company in 1996. I was devastated. I had been there for three years, and it was a job I really liked.

Writing a book is not easy.

Sometimes you need to be shaken out of a situation.

I would never, for the sake of the story or a twist, have a character do something that they just wouldn't do. I really couldn't. I'd rather miss out on the twist.

I never had one of those glorious young bodies that make older men and women weep. So I don't tend to look back with nostalgia or yearn for what I've lost. Because it was never all that.

Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages.

I am the oldest of three girls and the only one not named after one of my father's ex-girlfriends.

My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

I take the six weeks of the school summer holidays off because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to look back on my life one day and say, 'Damn, I wish I hadn't spent so much time with my children.'

Every brilliant book I read is an influence and an inspiration. As is every brilliant movie I watch and every brilliant box set.

When I travel, I can leave everything at home apart from books. I curate my holiday reading rigorously and would be devastated if I found I'd left one at home.

When I was a little girl, I was a real, drippy bookworm. But when I went into fashion, I stopped reading.

It wasn't until I was 23 and got married to a guy who was really bookish that I got completely hooked on reading and writing again. He had so many paperbacks, I didn't have to buy a book for four and a half years.

I knew I wasn't the sort of person who could do a full-time job and write in the evening and at weekends.

You feel undervalued when you write the kind of fiction I write.

My mother died in 2005. She was 61 years old.

I am a terrible, terrible typist. I could not have been a writer in the age of typewriters.