When I was 11, I cheated on a spelling test. Our teacher was on the warpath, and anyone who failed the test was going to be in serious trouble. I’d done my best to learn the spellings – but my brain just wasn’t wired that way. To me, the list of words was a jumble of random letters that swam about on the page.

So I cheated. My friend Lorna who had helped me revise for the test on the bus that morning shifted her body in the chair next to mine so that I could easily see her paper. She gave me an encouraging glance. I bit my lip and for the first and last time in my life, I cheated.

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