LIFE STARTS AT 50

Far from facing a midlife crisis, these three women have found a new lease of life

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'I thought proper books were written by other people'

Ivy Ngeow, 55, lives with her husband and their two children, aged 18 and 14.

Gazing at all the books on the shelves, I fantasised about one day being talented enough to write one. It was 1978 and, aged eight, I had a voracious love of reading and the local library was my favourite place to be. Starting with Enid Blyton, I soon moved on to the classics and although I always dreamt of becoming a writer, I just assumed it wasn't something that an ordinary person like me could ever achieve. Still, I loved making up stories and I was always reading them to my brothers.

As well as being creative, I was good at maths, and I ended up with a career in architecture. I continued writing short stories to relax, drawing inspiration from everyday life, but it was always just for fun. I married my husband in 1998 and, while studying for an MA in writing at Middlesex University in 2005, I won the uni's Literary Press Prize with one of my stories. 'Maybe I can do this,' I thought. I wrote my first novel, Cry of the Flying Rhino, around work and raising our two children.

NEVER GIVING UP

After 80 rejections over 12 years, and many rewrites, it finally won a literary award in 2016, and in 2018 I had my second book, Heart of Glass, published. But it wasn't until 2021 that I discovered psychological thrillers were my forte. That year I wrote The American Boyfriend