True, when the honeymoon period ended, Fiona vented her spleen on us too. But the Fiona I got to know over the next five years was also affectionate, generous, spontaneous, articulate and increasingly self-sufficient. Well, I think I understand that a little better since we've been virtually forced to talk to each other about it in the making of a radio programme. What has emerged from Fiona's side is her sense of having a lack of space, almost of suffocation. As a family, we are intensely communicative.
People are always being asked how they feel, what they want, what they think.
Coming from a children's home, where the only choice was like it or lump it, Fiona was just not prepared for this. She says now that her worst nightmares were our family meetings, where the children were asked about their views on everything from the colour of their wallpaper to where they wanted to go on holiday. Throughout these, Fiona would sit mute and disconsolate, longing, I now know, for the anonymity of the children's home. From our side, and in spite of some good times with Fiona, we were beginning to buckle under her pressure to leave us. She now admits that, towards the end, she was deliberately pushing us to reject her.