Love, naturally. Catherine Johnson

Did you get a card? Is there a true love waiting to whisk you off for some romantic outing?  What the hell,  surely it's always better - if in those heady love drunk early days - simply to stay indoors?

If you're not actually in love is there anything worse than Valentine's day? I know all through my teens it was a kind of torture, the lack of cards, the complete lack of interest in me by, it seemed, the entire world.

I'm in an anthology out for today and edited by Malorie Blackman, Love Hurts.

There aren't many historical stories or extracts in it. There's a very sweet 1960s set love story by James Dawson;The Unicorn which cleverly and engagingly looks at pre Sexual Offences Act gay relationships.

And there's mine, The Liar's Girl, set in 1829 and knitted (see, you know I love knitting) together from ballads, reading Great Expectations and thinking about prison hulks, and a short snippet (whose source eludes me now) about a West Indian transported to London to be put on trial for Obeah (black magic).

I am so sorry. I began this post fully intending to share my research. It is a good thing I simply write fiction as I never even sat a history GCSE (They were O levels when I was the relevant age) because I was so rubbish at school.

And luckily, as I have never been to the past I will continue making things up, finding the cracks between things I have actually read and making something vaguely believable out of them.

Happy Valentines Day,

Catherine x