Will's mother's hokey homily - 'Waste not, want not' - hisses in his ears as he oscillates furiously on the spot, havering on the threshold between the bedroom and the dying one, all the while cradling the plastic leech of the syringe in the crook of his arm. Oscillating furiously, and, as he presses the plunger home a touch more - and more - he hears it again and again: 'Waaaste nooot, waaant nooot!', whooshing into and out of him, while the blackness...

Lesley Pearse didn't publish her first novel until she was 48. Now she has sold over ten million books around the world and is a constant presence on the bestseller chart. A writer of heart-stopping stories, Lesley's books are filled with heroines struggling to make it in a difficult world. Yet this description could apply to Lesley herself. In this, her first ever autobiography, she tells of growing up in an orphanage after her mother's death, her...