Locked away in a hall of residence room in Nantes, I wasn’t coping very well at all. I had returned to the city to take some extra courses and gain credits for a full French undergraduate degree, even though it was hard to imagine why I would ever need any more qualifications.

Simultaneously I was also organising a reunion for graduates of the University of Washington iSchool, amongst whom numbered several ex-pupils of Teesside High School. These grown-up “girls” were readily identified because they never went out of the house without first donning their brown school berets.

My body responded to the stress of all these demands on my time by doing something extraordinary. I cloned myself!

Rousse 2 looked almost identical to me. She was perhaps a little younger and less out-going in her personality, but otherwise she was instantly recognisable. Unfortunately she was unaware of “her” back-story of studies in France and the American reunion. In fact, dressed in a long floaty cotton skirt, she was under the impression that she was on a beach holiday in Florida. I dreaded to think what she would make of the news that she was now obliged to give up her precious time off to help deal with the never-ending duties of Rousse 1.