Smash hit

“Sometimes when the court welfare people come I don’t really enjoy that very much. They bring back lots of memories.”

The past few years must have been difficult? “Yeah, but I try not to let it affect me. From what I got out of it, it helped me. I got the book published. I think it’s down to fate because it all happened because of something bad but now it looks like it was for a reason. That’s probably why I enjoyed writing it because it proves it wasn’t all being sad and crying.”

There is a lot Libby can’t remember, it seems. Kathryn, who married at 20 and is now 41, explains that “on a personal basis” she does not wish to have contact with her ex-husband, and reminds me smoothly that we are meeting to discuss Libby’s book: “Positive thinking, anger management, whatever.”

Is this how Kathryn operates? She uses positive-thinking techniques, she concedes, but she doesn’t own a self-help book and has not had therapy.

Libby reiterates that she wants to make a difference and explains that this idea is part of the culture of her family — they’re always entering competitions, and she thinks it’s always worth trying things because you never know when they’re going to work. Was her father part of this encouraging spirit? She pauses. “If he did, I can’t remember.” Neither can she remember happy times with him, she says, though she is sure there were some.

My impression is that Libby has responded to her mother’s unhappiness at the time of the separation by editing her father out of her life. Talking about the benefits of looking at happy photographs, she refers to pictures from her mother’s childhood. “If you look at old photographs before you were around you don’t feel like you’ve missed out on anything, and you can tell if someone was happy at the time and then you feel happy with them.”

Kathryn mentions that they used to live in a picture-postcard cottage with a white picket fence and direct access to the New Forest, and Libby hopes that next year they will be able to move from their current home, a former showhouse like lots of others around it, to one where she can have a bigger menagerie than her present “bunny rabbit” and goldfish. When she says bunny rabbit she momentarily sounds like a child of her age, but when I congratulate her on her consideration for other people and ask whether she ever throws a wobbly she replies gravely that she thinks everyone does. “I would be lying if I said no.”

Thank goodness for that. We talk through her tips, and she repeats how it is helpful to remember happy moments, to indulge in measured retail therapy as a distraction from bad feelings, and to keep your room tidy because that can give you a “fresh new start”. She also advocates finding a place where you can be alone and scream and shout to release anger. The thought of this controlled and inscrutable child behaving noisily and aggressively is incongrous, but Libby assures me that this is a good one. “It’s very quiet in the New Forest and I go with my friends’ dogs. That was the first idea I had, when you throw a stick you say your bad feeling and throw it away. I think it works.”

Her composure falters only twice: when I ask about endorphins, which she mentions in her book but seems to have forgotten about, and when I refer to Dead Poets Society, a film that she advocates watching, though she has seen only a clip herself, it emerges.

“I think when you have something negative in your life then you realise how important it is to make the most of things,” she reminds me. “I realised just from experience that you should try and be positive because you don’t know when you’ve got something, and when you won’t have it any more.”

It’s a poignant line from a little girl who I suspect is much sadder than she will ever admit.

Libby's words of wisdom for children who have problems

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