My life started properly when I was 10 years old. It’s not that my older brother Mark and I didn’t have a childhood before my father married again, simply that it wouldn’t have won any accolades.

We weren’t at the wedding. Instead, Mark and I were in our respective boarding schools, both sent there when we turned seven so my father could manage his army life as a single parent. That summer when everything was to be so different, we waited impatiently for him to collect us to travel to Wales. We were kicking our heels in our dad’s childhood home in Surrey, where the best meal we could hope for from our grandad was cold potatoes and Spam and, if we were unlucky, some over-boiled cabbage from the garden, accompanied by small black slugs.

I don’t remember how we arrived there, but we woke up in a cramped flat in Menai Bridge, the first home that really counted as ours. We could look out of our window right onto the Menai Straits, with its little islands and jetty, the mainland of North Wales opposite, and the beautiful Telford suspension bridge almost within touching distance. The morning sunshine lit up the water and, with the sailing boats and dinghies, it was picture-postcard perfect.

Maureen, our new stepmother, was a miracle. Twenty-seven years old, stylish, with her hair in a French roll, she was chronically late where my dad was obsessively punctual. She was an improbable match for our father, who regarded life and himself as a serious matter. Maureen was a novice cook and made us some strange and wonderful meals, tucked us into bed at night, and played air violin to loud music when my dad wasn’t around.

The summer really started when more family came for their holidays. Suddenly we had a raft of new step-cousins, aunts and uncles all determined to have fun. On hot days, we would set out early in two or three cars, shouting and waving out of the windows and singing rounds of Michael rowed the boat ashore and You’ll never get to heaven in an Austin Seven. The beaches were long and sandy, with names to get our tongues round, like Rhosneigr and Benlech. While at Red Wharf Bay, we took buckets and spades and dug out cockles, filling a big pail to the brim to take back to Maureen’s mother to boil up for supper. Then we would drive back across Anglesey, with the magic of the sun on the three peaks of Tryfan as Snowdonia appeared like a brilliant cut-out on the other side of the Straits.

Many years later, at Maureen’s memorial service, my brother got up to speak. He was always cryptic, but this time was more enigmatic than ever.

‘Children need mothers,’ he said. ‘Maureen sang. She cooked. She was never on time.’

It must have sounded odd, but I knew what he meant. It meant everything.