I survived childhood

You would certainly never guess that she spent 14 years being brought up by a succession of physically abusive step-fathers in the worst of Manchester's council estates, regularly missing school to care for her manic depressive mother.

Her own father died when she was six after he fell into a river, and the rest of her childhood was a living nightmare. But Andrea survived - by escaping into the world of books, reading under her covers or outside the house in the cold, to avoid being beaten. And it paid off: she was accepted into Oxford University to read English and has lived in the city ever since, writing books and researching female literature.

Once in a House on Fire is her poignant account of growing up in a dysfunctional family. It has won numerous literary prizes, been on best-seller lists all over the world and was serialised in two national newspapers. Oh, and the film rights have just been sold.

It's what the critics call "unputdownable", but what is most impressive is that Andrea seems so unaffected. The book finishes when she arrives in Oxford and we are left to imagine her in the new, pain-free, academic world where she has remained ever since - and where I caught up with her to finish off the story.

She told me: "I had seen pictures of Oxford but nothing prepared me for how beautiful it was. I had a sense of stepping into another world.

"When things were really bad at home I would get out the University prospectus and look at it, knowing I was going there.

"I was like a plant that was uprooted and replanted in earth where it flourished," she explained. But even when she was tucked away at university, she couldn't get away from her family. Her mother and step-father had got back together and the abuse was increasing. Both her younger sisters had left home to escape the constant beatings. "I remember, when I arrived in Oxford, waiting outside the phone box on the Bridge of Sighs every night to ring home and see if my mother was still alive, if she'd tried to kill herself or had been attacked. Their problems went on for a long time and eventually I stopped going home in the holidays. "I think my mother was hurt but I also think she understood. I stayed at college and did odd jobs to pay my way - anything to save me from returning to Manchester," she said.

"Oxford has been a real sanctuary for me. It's the first safe and happy home I had and I've been here for ten years now. It's my anchor."

But it wasn't until she left the UK after graduating that she felt ready to write a book about her experiences. "I wrote the first chapter abroad. I was far enough away from my family to feel safe, and brave enough to look back and see what actually happened. It was then that I asked how I got here, so I came back to Oxford and finished the rest. "Writing Once in a House on Fire was the hardest and most painful thing I have ever done, because I had to revisit my past in a detail I had been trying to forget."

But despite the horrific tales of abuse, her family thought it was a kind depiction of their lives. "For every incident I described there were 20 others that, because of discretion and respect for my mother, I didn't include. I spoke to her about it before I started and she encouraged me to write the book."

Now, 12 years later, she is preparing a sequel, describing the huge leap from Moss Side to Jesus College. But first comes a novel, due next year, about an 80-year-old artist who employs a young girl to act as her eyes. "I wanted to write a novel before I wrote the sequel, to show that I can," the 30-year-old said. "After I left Oxford I went to Yale and Harvard and then moved to New York, where I got a job working for an artist who was going blind. The novel won't be about my experience but it gave me the idea," she said.

"Instead of sitting down religiously in front of a computer every day, I write in cafes or in bed. I have itchy fingers to write but itchy toes to run around. But if I need to get something done I can knuckle down and do it," she said.

As for the future, Andrea is happy writing, being with her researcher boyfriend and travelling the world on book tours. But she wants children and tries to keep the past at bay. "That's why I wrote the book: to put the past in its place so I could get on with my life," she explained.

It is not only Andrea whose life has taken a turn for the better. Her mother and stepfather split for good and her sisters have landed jobs - one as a dancer in Paris and the other as a heart technician.

"My mother is back at college learning," Andrea said, "and I saw all my sisters at the weekend. We are incredibly close and they're my best friends. My mother is just amazed that we are all still alive and together."

*Once in a House on Fire is published in paperback by Picador, priced £6.99.

Story date: Monday 18 October

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.