My parents threw me out at sixteen after I lost my leg. Nineteen years later they wanted a million dollars for my sister — to hide why a 24 -year-old woman may never walk again.

And my mother gave a little laugh with nothing in it, and said:

Because you owe this family.

I stood there for a second.

Then I looked down at my left leg.

The titanium shows below the hem of my trousers. It always does. That is a choice I made a long time ago and I have not changed it for boardrooms, for photographs, or for anybody.

I tapped it. Twice. With two fingers.

I said: I owe you?

The colour went out of her face.

I was ten when they found the cancer in that leg. It was aggressive and it was fast and within a few weeks they took it above the knee.

I remember waking up in that room afterwards. The light was wrong. Somebody was talking in the corridor.

I put my hand under the blanket.

And then I cried for my mother, the way you do when you are ten.