‘I am stepping into
glorious Technicolor. I
am playing 2014 to win’
It’s a challenge I relish. I love a challenge. When I was 21, I moved to Japan
straight out of university. Growing up in the
North East, brought up by a hard-work- ing
mum after my dad died young, mak- ing a life
for myself – alone – in Asia should have been
daunting. I didn’t know anyone there. I didn’t
know the language. I didn’t, in retrospect,
know anything about the world. I just wanted
to go.
I’d always loved learning languages,
but people around me were sceptical. I
re- member daydreaming out loud as a
teen- ager about moving to Paris, and my
then- stepfather laughing. It didn’t crush the
old colourful me; it made me defiant. Japan
trumped France and, when I learned that I
could work teaching English, and be paid
to do the travelling I desperately wanted
but couldn’t afford, I jumped at it. I wasn’t
a colour-phobe in those days. Quite the opposite. There’s a picture of me in a multicoloured skirt and a turquoise jumper, kawaii
– or ‘cute’,,as my students might have told
me – as youplease.
What is it about the intervening years
that’ss changed things? Like most women
my age, I now have a career I work hard at
and am desperately proud of. But I am in
equal part terrified that someone might one
day say, ‘Oh, sorry, we made a mis- take.’ So
I keep my head down and get on. That’s my
stoic, working-class upbringing foryou:You
don’t brag; you don’t make a fuss; you don’t
take; you wait till you’re of- fered. You are,
above all things, grateful.
I’ve always felt it served me well – I
got this far, didn’t I? But at what cost? Japan
led me to a husband, then London, and said
career was just getting going when it all
started to fall apart, and I had a choice to
make: my job or my marriage. I chose my
marriage. It was the wrong decision.
Coming back to London, just weeks
later, was humiliating. I felt like I’d burned my
bridges; that I’d had my shot and blown it. I
was too embarrassed to look up old contacts;
to start networki