I had often wondered why my parents christened me so late; not as a baby, but as a strapping 4-year-old.

I’d already started nursery school, wearing my favourite tartan dress and scratchy mustard tights most days.

I must have asked my parents about it all, but no one ever seemed to want to answer.

The truth was, Mum suffered postpartum psychosis and abruptly left the family home shortly after I was born. The rest is a story for another day.

Years later, whilst rooting through the box of old photos at my parents’ house, I found an old black-and-white photo of me as a very small baby with Mum and Dad. We posed for the camera, standing next to Dad’s rose garden, his pride and joy.

A happy family.

The odd thing about this scene was it was Dad who held me in his arms, not Mum. I had seen this photo before. But seeing it again, in light of a recent discovery about my early months and years, made it even more poignant.

Of course Mum wasn’t holding me.

She was already lost when the photo was taken. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes; they were blank and unfocused.

As I was to discover in my teens, Mum had a long history of mental illness – ‘episodes’ Dad called them – when she would be in and out of the psych hospital.

The common cause of her decline seemed to be hormones. After the birth of each of us, there would be an inevitable slide into dangerous, black waters.

I vividly remember the day when I went into her bedroom with her morning cup of tea, only to find her stiff and unmoving, staring blankly into the oval mirror perched above her pristine white dressing table. It was as if she could neither hear nor see me. Her face ashen – devoid of expression.

Oh, that face, usually so expressive when she was well; full of laughter lines and smiles.

Fun mum. Giggly Mum. My Mum.

Instinct told me to shout for Dad. He was busy downstairs in the kitchen with his morning routine. Clattering around with pots and pans, making his morning porridge as if nothing at all untoward was happening.

I suppose he might already have known what was about to unfold, and so was making the most of those last moments of relative normality.

After what seemed like a lifetime, I heard his muffled reply drifting up the stairs; ‘Coming, love’. His slippered footsteps followed, treading a familiar pattern on the brown wool carpet. I had hurled myself headfirst down those stairs so many times as a small child; surfing wildly on my ‘Holly Hobby’ quilt. This was the kind of thing that passed for entertainment in the 1970s.

As the door slowly opened, he looked at me in a way which sadly, silently said; ‘I’ll take over from here, I know what this is’.

That was the last time I saw Mum for a while, save for the brief glimpse of her tiny frail figure as she disappeared into the waiting ambulance.

I remember thinking; I wonder what the neighbours will say.

Odd that the child would concern themselves with such a thing.

I could, and probably should have been in hysterics at the sight of my mum being taken away to goodness knows where, and for how long.

But I knew to keep my distance, stay quiet. Let Dad’s cool, matter-of-fact efficiency deal with this.

I was older now. I had to keep my feelings to myself. This was no time for hysteria. Dad wouldn’t know what to do with me anyway.

If any of my friends in the small cul-de-sac of 17 houses had seen the goings on, what would I say to them? Someone was bound to ask ‘where’s your Mum?’

I hid from everyone for a while. Just until the dust settled and everyone had forgotten all about the drama at number 9.

My way of dealing with the trauma and sadness that no child should have to bear, and that ripped yet another wound to my very core, was to bury it all deep in my subconscious. I had neither the emotional capacity nor the maturity to process this on my own. I simply pretended, just like Dad, that none of this was really happening.

I might have been young, but I knew what this was.

So, it came as no surprise to find that the family heirloom of postpartum depression would one day come to haunt me too.