I loved my childhood Catholic home. My Irish parents hung pictures of saints next to family photographs. Statues of Our Lady, St Patrick, St Bernadette and Padre Pio were on the mantelpiece and sideboard and on top of the TV. We went to Mass, Benediction, Stations of the Cross and Confession at every opportunity, and to Lourdes and Walsingham and Knock on pilgrimage. I prayed to my guardian angel morning and evening, the Morning Offering every morning, and every night we prayed the Rosary together. We prayed for the living, but also for anyone who had died and was hoping for support as they waited in Purgatory. We were all, living and dead, one Catholic family.

Off I went to university in 1983, aged 18. I took with me a bottle of Lourdes water, a holy water font, my crucifix and the Morning and Evening Prayer book I had asked for when I was 16, and a cassette of Gregorian chant. I went to Mass every day. I studied English Literature, and met lots of people, in books and out of them, who were not Catholics, and who did not keep the rules I carefully adhered to, and I found that I loved them all the same and learnt a great deal from them.