ILLUSTRATION: JESSICA DURRANT/GETTY IMAGES
MY MOTHER WAS always there. Beside me when I needed a listening ear, in the kitchen cooking our dinner, at every sports day and parents’ evening… constant, loving, reliable. She’d pick me up from friends’ homes after rowdy nights out and laugh as I told her of the pickles we’d squeezed our way out of with our wit and wiles. She’d pull up early outside school, windows down, Paul Weller blasting from the car stereo – my chemistry teacher remarking that she had excellent taste in music. Good times.