A moment that changed me: I climbed a tower aged nine, alone – and discovered how I wanted to live

Up there by myself, I decided life might be best on my own. That thought has shaped my travel and relationships ever since I grew up in Kenya and was nine when we went camping by the beach in Mombasa, with two other families. The constant games and laughter were new to me, as we were a quiet, rather insular family. I went bodyboarding, watched crabs emerge from holes in the sand, climbed all over rusty cannons in the old fort and bought colourful strips of kanga fabric in the market to make sarongs. One day, my father asked some fishers to take us to the reef in their canoes. It was a good mile offshore: I wanted to stay behind with Mum, but Dad fixed me with a look and said: “You’ve got no sense of adventure, have you?” Then I knew I had to go, clambering shakily into the wobbly wooden construction, clinging on to the sides for dear life. Returning from that horrifying adventure (bobbing about on the Indian Ocean in quite a swell, with my mother a tiny anxious dot on the distant shore), all the other kids rushed off to the playground nearby, climbing up high rope structures and screaming at the fun of it all. But I’d had enough of all of them – and of Dad, too. A little