Humbugs and Heartstrings: A gorgeous festive read full of the joys of Christmas!

For a shy child like me, that first day was scary.

When thin, grey-haired Mrs Weavering told us to change for PE, I took off my socks and put the brand new things that Mum called ‘sandshoes’ on my bare feet. They had a funny smell that made me think of the inside of our car.

It was only when one of my new classmates called out, ‘Mrs Weavering, that girl’s taken off her socks!’ and the whole room turned to look where she was pointing, that I realised I had got it wrong. Everyone else had known they should keep their socks on.

I can still remember the mocking laughter in that cavernous gym hall setting my cheeks on fire, and the way that Carol McGinley, squashed beside me on the long balance bench, came to my rescue. She leaned into me and grinned. Then she stood up and announced to the class and Mrs Weavering that she, too, was going to take her socks off because she liked bare feet. I remember the defiant look she gave the rest of the class. And I remember feeling proud – and a little relieved – to have Carol McGinley on my side.

After that, she was always in my corner.

Until she wasn’t …

At playtime, Carol told me her mum and dad were rich and that I could come for tea if I liked. And when I saw where she lived, I realised they must be very rich indeed, because it was an enormous house with the most incredible garden I had ever seen in my life. It had a wood and a tree-house and even a mini lake.

Until I saw where Carol lived, I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that some people have money and some people don’t.

I wondered what Carol would think when she saw number four Worcester Way, the little house where I lived with my mum and dad. As it turned out, she thought I was really lucky to have a slide in my back garden and a mum who was always there and baked such yummy cakes. (The childminder collected Carol from school because her parents were always at work.)

I think it was comparing how we lived to the McGinleys’ lifestyle that first brought out the entrepreneur in me.

When other ten-year-olds were dreaming of dates with Simon Le Bon or Jason Orange, I’d spend hours thinking up money-making schemes and imagining how pleased Mum and Dad would be when we were as rich as Carol. Once I bought a giant bag of sweets with my pocket money, split them up into smaller bags and sold them to kids in the playground for a few pence, ending up with a satisfying profit that I carefully saved in my piggy bank. It was all done out of sight of the teachers, of course – and my parents, who would have been mortified if they’d known what I was up to.

Then there was the cake-baking during the school holidays. Mum was fine about this because she reckoned it kept me usefully occupied when I could have been wailing for cinema visits and shopping trips and declaring myself terminally bored.

I would set up a little stall at the entrance to our cul-de-sac and sell my iced fairy cakes to passers-by, mostly neighbours and friends of my parents, who presumably thought me cute.

Carol hated my money-raising schemes. Mainly because I’d get so involved, I had no time to hang around with her and trail the boy she happened to be mad on at the time. All my waking hours would be taken up shopping, baking, working out my profit margins and entering my version of accounts into a little lined notebook.

I remember one Saturday afternoon when we were about twelve she wanted me to go into town and meet a boy she’d fancied for ages and his friend on a sort of ‘double date’. She was livid when I refused.

‘All you care about is your fucking cake stall!’ she screeched and ran off in tears.

I’d never seen her so mad. She was usually as laid-back as they come.

But she didn’t understand. Why would she?

She never got teased for not wearing the ‘right’ trainers. Her mother didn’t worry herself half to death each month as rent day drew near.

Hanging around with boys just didn’t interest me. I was far more focused on trying to raise our family’s fortunes. Once, I saved up for ages and bought Mum a handbag made from real leather for her birthday. She cried and declared it far too beautiful to take round the shops, and it sat on her bedside table for weeks before she gave it an airing.

But Carol and I stuck together through school, a well-known comic double act: Carol ‘Plank’ McGinley and Bobbie ‘Fat Bum’ Cartwright. We remained the best of friends even when college sent us in different directions – she to study business in London (after her father threatened to cut her off without a penny if she went to drama college) and me to pursue my passion for sculpture and crafts at an art college in the South.

I moved to London after graduation and Carol persuaded me to flat-share. Her father had bought the place as an investment and Carol lived there for free. But the McGinleys had instilled thrifty ways in their children from an early age so I still paid rent. Carol carefully shaved five per cent off the going rate, although in trendy Notting Hill, it was still a long way off cheap.

And then, soon after, I met Bob.

Life was exciting, filled with thrilling possibilities, the way it is in your twenties.

But then my plans to start up an online shop, selling – among other things – my own glass vases and Christmas baubles, faltered almost from the word go. It took a long time to start up a proper business. But I needed money immediately, to pay the rent.

Before too long, I was up to my eyes in debt trying to maintain my London lifestyle on a waitress’s wages.

I was on the point of throwing in the towel and moving back up North when Carol came back from a drink with a friend, eyes shining. She’d heard of an amazing way to make money. Her friend, she said, was studying a way of analysing the financial markets in order to predict turns. She showed me the book she’d borrowed and talked excitedly about things called Fibonacci numbers, Elliott Waves and the Golden Ratio, and she made it sound like a science, instead of the gambling I at first assumed it was.

I was still doubtful.

But as I had a pile of bills that was growing by the week, I decided it wouldn’t do any harm to find out more. Carol’s friend certainly seemed to be having amazing results. She’d only been doing it three months, but she’d already given up a good job as a marketing executive in order to be a full-time trader.

So I studied the books with Carol, we bought the software and started the most adrenaline-pumped journey of our lives.

Watching the movements of the markets was so compelling, we’d often still be there, behind our computer screens at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, long after midnight, surrounded by coffee mugs and the remains of sandwiches snatched on the go. The rush when we were right and managed to predict a turn was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

Once, I went to Mum’s for a long weekend and arrived back on Monday to find that I was eighteen thousand pounds richer.

We had a big party that night.

But the trick was not just spotting when to get in with a trade. You also had to know when to get out. Because if you hung on too long as the markets climbed or fell your way, a swift turn could take you by surprise and those values could go tumbling in the opposite direction, eating up all your hard-won profit and more besides.

It was exciting, at times rewarding and at other times, excruciatingly nail-biting.

And it always felt vaguely shaming to me.

However much I dressed it up in fancy, technical terms, it was gambling, pure and simple.

And as several friends who knew me well pointed out, it was also a very long way from my original career plans.

But we had a golden six months and made a fair bit of money. This was all wonderfully new to me. For once I didn’t have to worry about bills or weigh up carefully whether I could afford a new mascara. And at last I could treat Mum and Tim to the little luxuries they’d never had.

But then things began to change. I think we started taking more risks. We’d ride a trend longer than we used to, in the hope that it would turn out to be ‘the big one’ that traders dream of – the one that clears the mortgage.

Big success was always just one more trade away.

Our profits started to decline and then it became a vicious circle. Because we were losing money, we’d heap on bigger stakes in a desperate attempt to offset our losses.

After one last terrifying gamble, I was left with absolutely nothing. Not even the train fare back home. Mum had to buy the ticket for me.

It was a rollercoaster ride that left me devastated – financially, physically and emotionally.

And at a time when I needed Carol’s friendship more than ever, she was no longer there for me.

When I told her I had no option but to leave London and move in with Mum and Tim, and that I was all packed and ready to go, she just stared at me and walked out of the room. She wouldn’t talk about it. She just shut me out.

She was acting like I was deliberately deserting her. But what choice did I have? I had no rich Daddy to pick up the pieces, buy me an apartment and set me up in business!

How could she possibly understand how hard it was to be forever counting the pennies, when she always had it so easy?

In our teens when we scooped up sale items on Saturday shopping trips, she’d sling her arm round my shoulder and laugh, ‘We’re just the same, you and me. We’ll do anything to bag a bargain.’

I’d force a smile when she said things like that. But deep down, it hurt. I’d be thinking, But no, Carol, we’re not the same. Why can’t you understand that?