'Sex has replaced food in my book for adults'

The former children’s laureate talks sex, marriage and spicing up her second book for adults.

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FORMER children’s laureate Dame Jacqueline Wilson confesses that the passionate sex scenes in her second book for adults have left her wondering how friends and family will react.

“I have to forget that everybody who is a friend of mine or family might be going to read it, because otherwise you get tremendously hot under the collar and embarrassed about it,” the sprightly bestselling author of more than 100 books and creator of Tracy Beaker admits. “I just live in the moment of my characters.”

At 79, she has written Picture Imperfect, a followup to her children’s book The Illustrated Mum (adapted into a TV movie in 2003 starring Michelle Collins), which introduced the eponymous mum, tattoo-adorned Marigold, and her two daughters Dolphin and Star as they try to come to terms with their mother’s depression and instability.

Fast-forward two decades and Picture Imperfect finds Dolphin, 33, now a talented tattoo artist, struggling to move on, living in a bedsit and trying to look after Marigold, who has bipolar disorder and is hospitalised, while her sister Star is a doctor, and is seemingly not putting in enough effort to help as she lives in Scotland with her family.

Dolphin hopes romance will save her and is torn between dependable but boring gardener Lee and his daughter Ava or exciting Lothario actor Joel. The sex scenes in the book range from functional to frantic, in tandem with the characters.

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“I do remember quite vividly when I was 33, although my circumstances were very difficult [she was then married to Millar Wilson with a young daughter, Emma, who is now a Cambridge professor], difficult marriage, difficult circumstances, but I think basically people still have the same emotions inside.”

Tattoos feature heavily in the story, yet the lively, contemporary-thinking author confesses she’s never had one for fear that whatever was inscribed on the skin in youth would become less relevant with age.