I was a strange kid, growing up.

After my father married his second wife, we moved into her house out in the country.

It was a huge place with an immense garden, fields surrounding it on every side.

We had a vast yard enclosed by thick boxtree hedges and fir-trees, little cobblestone pathways that led through beautiful, overgrown flower-patches, a lawn, that took hours to mow, and that led off to our own little sand-covered playground on one side - with a set of swings, a large slide, and a fireplace - and to our private little forest on the other.

The house itself used to be a farm long ago, but now it looked more like a mansion.

There was a winding gravel-pathway that led to our front door - a large double door with white framework, those thick, curved glass windows and two gilded ornamental lion heads, one on each door, that held heavy rings in their mouth and could be used to knock (although my sister and I were regularly told off for doing so, as there weren't really meant to be used).

In front of the house grew a large ancient oak, well over 200 years old, that was large enough to overshadow all three stories of the house, and thick vine-leaves covered the entire south wall.

It was a beautiful place.

The inside was just as nice. The furnishings were tasteful, a nice mixture of the very old and the very new, the floors covered in marble and expensive parquet, classic paintings on the walls, shelves full of books, ornaments and flowers decorating the surfaces.

The living area was large and open, one entire wall taken up by a floor to ceiling window and french doors, that led out into the garden, and an old, iron-wrought fireplace on the opposite one.

The distances in that house were quite a challenge to my short, four-year-old legs and getting anywhere seemed to take forever, especially as I was forbidden to run, on pain of ... well, pain.

Despite the expensive-looking mansion we lived in, we weren't rich. My step-mother had inherited the house and grounds, and, being a very vain woman, she devoted all our time and money to its upkeep.

During my childhood, house and groundwork was how we spend our afternoons, it was how we spend our holidays, and it was what we did for family events.

During my childhood, house and groundwork was the yardstick by which you measured love.

I was a strange kid growing up.

I used to have this compulsion.

Whenever I walked past my father or my step-mother, I would say: "I love you."

If I crossed the living room where they sat, to have a glass of water in the kitchen, I would say "I love you," and I would say it again a minute later on my way back.

I would say it when we crossed paths in the hallway, or on the stairs, if I met them in the garden or if I left any room they were in, even if I just went out to get something and knew I would be back within seconds, I would say it.

"I love you, I love you, I love you."

It was only years later, that I realized, that when my four-year-old self said: "I love you," sometimes ten, twenty, thirty times a day, it was "I love you, so please, please don't leave me," that I meant.

For a time, my father and my step-mother would return my strange greeting.
Soon, however, they started to ridicule me for it - in a way that quickly turned vicious - until, at the age of five, I stopped.

Even today, over twenty years later, I still have difficulties saying those three words.