My name is Rowan Redman, and this is the story of how my life began, my real life, not the first twenty-one years or so; I sleepwalked through them, like probably most of my generation. My life actually started when I was twenty-two, when I was still at university, studying for an MSc. in Architectural Engineering and living at home with my mother and my little sister, Naomi, known to the world at large as Nimmie, or just plain Nim.
Mum was an author, writing for various magazines, local interest pieces for the most part, but also several moderately successful children’s books under various noms de plume. We were what you could probably call a typical family.
My father did a bunk when I was thirteen; he was an investment counsellor and broker, and when his business took off, so did he, shacking-up with his nineteen year old secretary with tits like basketballs and a brain you could fit in a mouse’s ear and still have room for her personality. Mum was heartbroken, as she should have been, but she pulled it all together and carried on, doing the work of two parents because our feckless father didn’t want anything more to do with us.