WE HAVE recently returned from an Easter break – thank you to my colleagues Emily and Jessica for telling readers about ‘their worlds’ in my absence.

They braved the responses which come with the territory when you share your life and confess your own foibles and occasionally those of your nearest and dearest in print.

It was absolutely lovely to spend time with my parents and my daughter was spoiled rotten by her grandparents. She is their only grandchild, and reaps the benefits substantially.

Returning home to England was bittersweet, as it always is, but it also made me think about one of my main neuroses re being away on holiday.

In addition to my anxieties about travelling generally, queues, bag weight and so on, I always have the awful fear that something will happen to our house while we are away.

It’s a feeling that haunts me for the entire duration of the time we are gone and doesn’t subside until we are safely back in the door.

Unlike many of my irrational anxieties, I know exactly where this one stems from; many years ago, our family home was burgled whilst we were on a break during the summer.

I was almost 15-years-old at the time, and I have never forgotten arriving back to find our house in that state. It was instantly clear that something was wrong, a fact which became even more obvious as we entered the property and took in the extent of the damage and the theft.

Every single piece of technology was gone from the house, as were more personal items, including the confirmation locket which had been given to me by my godparents. Its monetary value was negligible, but it was priceless to me.

Police told us afterwards that the group had spent quite a long period of time in our home after breaking in by smashing a window to the rear of the property. This window was completely overlooked by three of our neighbours but they’d obviously slept through the disruption.

One of the thieves had even carried my dad’s old guitar into the living room to play it.

The general sense of violation was immense but we certainly counted our blessings in other respects.

Our family pets were all elsewhere being cared for, thank goodness, and at least we hadn’t had to undergo a more traumatic experience similar to that of our friend, who’d been asleep in bed while the thieves had been in his house.

Frighteningly, an item had been removed from his bedside table while he slept.

To this day, I vividly remember that first night back in my own bed, lying awake unable to stop thinking about the fact that, just a few nights previously, strangers had been in there.

How could they have rifled through all of my clothes and possessions, and those of my parents and brother, in front of family photographs of the people whose belongings he or she was touching and removing?