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Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell was other people, but for my mother it was bad smells. She campaigned against them, frequently advising me and my elder brother to take a shower, and immediately washed any clothes which she found "a bit wuffy". For her Satan, unlike God, had a smell; she could not have abided a sulphurous stench.

To judge from her buying sprees, her idea of heaven was a phalanx of fine shoes and a wardrobe full of expensive dresses, but she was less explicit about this. Mothers are often devout and fathers happy-go-lucky but, in my case, the categories were reversed: my father was dutifully religious whereas my mother hung free.

"We were ...