I wake up, wondering why I’m not on a beach in the Seychelles. Where is the sound of the ocean, the gentle sway of my hammock? This is the life a bonkbuster author ought to have: glamour, cocktails, lazy mornings spent penning a chapter in my satin bathrobe, all elegant turban and painted nails… Or maybe a gilded office in an LA mansion, surrounded by glossy ornamental panthers, à la the late, great Jackie Collins.

The reality is neither of these things. Instead, it’s downstairs in my Bristol cottage to warm a bottle of milk for my one-year-old. She’s already singing to herself, talking to her toys Michael, Jean and Trudi (I have to give proper names to every toy she owns, I don’t know why: she has a Duncan, for heaven’s sake). It takes us a long time to get dressed, interspersed as this is with removing every book I own from the bookshelves and having a good rummage in my underwear drawer), and all the while I’m imagining what happens next in my book. This was a trick an author friend told me a while back: when time is tight and opportunities are few, write the story in your head. That way, when you do get a chance to sit down and get to grips with the word count, it’s all there waiting for you. (This is advice I’d give any aspiring writer, by the way. Whether you’re on the bus, doing the washing up or queueing at the supermarket, write it in your head. It makes that blinking cursor much less scary.)

We go for a walk in the morning, up the hill to look at the lake. It’s beautiful, sunny, and there are a few sailboats on the water. I’m hoping she’ll drop off to sleep so I can sneak back and do an hour’s writing, but invariably she’s still babbling about something or other by the time we get home. Perhaps we’ll see a friend before lunch, or build that tower of colourful blocks for the six hundred and sixteenth time.

Ah, a nap! Early afternoon and I sit down to write. It pours out – and, oh, it’s nice to think about something that has nothing at all to do with babies. For a precious forty-five minutes, I’m whisked away to Italy (where my next book is set), drifting through the grounds of a fragrant Tuscan villa and getting lost in the lemon groves. Maybe I’ll answer some interview questions on my latest novel The Santiago Sisters, and immediately I’m transported back to Argentina, where the story begins and where I went on honeymoon. It seems a world away, before I even knew my daughter. In Patagonia, we rode horses and camped beneath the stars. I was always destined to know her, I realise: she was always in my stars.

Speaking of which, there she is, a squeak from upstairs. I’ve missed her a little and scoop her up for a hug. We decide to go to the zoo. She enjoys pointing at a gorilla, who is not impressed, and then she talks all the way home in the car: there are important messages to communicate but I have no idea what they are. I make the most of playing my music, because before long I’ll start getting requests from the crowd.

My husband comes home early evening. He asks me about my day. Judging by the washing up in the sink and the remnants of supper on the high chair, it looks like any other day. But I did get a mini-break to Italy, and to South America…and maybe tomorrow will be the same.

Victoria Fox’s The Santiago Sisters is out now.