And then there were three! The third Vita Carew mystery is a Christmas story. Vita is distracted from her studies by a mysterious patient in the hospital. He has been injured and lost his memory, and she decides to find out more. She is soon drawn into the strange happenings in Dr Potter’s rural medical practice.

I had a great time with Dr Potter and the evil Miss Edith Finch. I was fascinated by the idea of a pair of (very) psychologically disordered characters who bring out the very worst in each other. An evil couple is a deliciously creepy idea. And of course a doctor who turns to the bad is deeply unsettling. We rely on our doctors. We want to trust and believe them.

I’ve just retired from teaching. Until now writing has always been an activity squeezed in around the day job. I often wrote at 5am for an hour or two, and at weekends and during holidays. Now I can write all day long! I am wallowing in time, binge writing to my heart’s content – a thousand stories jostling in my head and fingers that can hardly type fast enough.