| My hair colour: | A sad old grey. The question is, should I die it? If so, what colour? Green? Pink? Mouse? | |
| My eye colour: | Depends on the weather. Sometimes grey, sometimes green, sometimes mud. | |
| My shoe size: | Come on, folks. This is classified information. | |
| My star sign: | Libra, but it's really sad to believe in all that stuff. | |
| My favourite book when child: | Cue for Treason, by Geoffrey Trease. Brilliant. Still is. | |
| My favourite fictional character: | The Fairy Godmother. | |
| Books that inspired me to become a writer: | None, really. I became a writer by accident. | |
| My favourite author: | How long have we got? There's about a million of them, starting with Jane Austen and ending with Emile Zola. | |
| My ideal reading position: | In bed, surrounded by feather pillows, with a bowl of apples by my side. | |
| My usual means of marking a place in a book: | I've got loads of lovely bookmarks, some made of leather, some embroidered, some painted. In fact, I collect them. | |
| My favourite time of year: | Hot, hot summer | |
| My favourite time of day: | Last thing at night, when I climb into bed, switch the light off and go "Ahhh! At last!" | |
| My best time for working: | In the morning. | |
| The first piece of work I was paid for was: | An article in Family Circle about hanging everything up in your kitchen to save space. Sad, I know. | |
| My favourite TV show: | Crimewatch. It's all those sneaky clips from CCTV cameras. Can't resist them. | |
| My favourite song: | The Erlking by Schubert. | |
| My favourite actor: | Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot. Pure genius. | |
| The creature comfort I would most unwillingly relinquish: | My feather duvet. | |
| My favourite sweet food: | Who thought up these questions? For heaven's sake! Chocolate, of course. | |
| My favourite savory food: | Roast duck. | |
| My typical bedtime is: | Around eleven. Too late really. I'd like to go to bed earlier, but never get around to it. | |
| My favourite year of childhood: | I don't know. Around 10, I suppose. | |
| The tidiest place in my home is: | The spare bedroom. | |
| The untidiest place in my home is: | Need you ask? It's my desk, and it's marginally, but only marginally, better than my husband's. | |
| The working tool I would least like to do without: | My precious, beloved propelling pencil, that I write all my novels with. I have a nervous breakdown whenever it goes missing. | |