‘I lie in the bath until it goes cold, thinking about storylines’

I love my three-floor, five-bedroom Victorian house in Herne Hill, south London, but there’s always something to do. I often fantasise about moving into a zero-maintenance flat now that my son’s left home and my daughter won’t be far behind.

I was born in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. I moved to the UK aged three, initially just with my English mother and brother, during the civil war in 1971. My Bengali father was stuck in India. At first, we lived with my maternal grandparents in their four-bedroom semi-detached house in Bolton. I don’t think they were best pleased that my mum had returned with these two little brown children.

After my dad joined us 18 months later, we moved into a cramped, often damp, ground-floor

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/monica-ali-i-lie-in-the-bath-until-it-goes-cold-thinking-about-storylines-95lx7qpv6