I can’t believe I’m standing here doing this. Darling Becky is dead - and I have so much more to say than time allows.

There was nobody quite like Becky. There was nobody remotely like her. She was deeply attuned to her inner world yet she lived life out loud. And she lived it with such authenticity. There was no gap between who she was and what she shared with the world. True to herself, open with others, an astonishing mixture of directness and sensitivity. She was passionate and hilarious and musical and fiery and joyful and poetic and infuriating and energetic and reflective and spontaneous and playful.

Many of you will have enjoyed her talent for mimicry. I have heard her do many of you sitting here now. One of her less convincing impersonations was Moby Dick, who would suddenly appear on swimming expeditions in the Doone Valley in Somerset. Not to be confused with her impression of the leaping Salar the Salmon.

I’m not sure if I really remember the morning when she was born, at home in Riversdale Road in Highbury. But I do remember sharing a bath with her one day, when she was just old enough to stand up. She was holding on to the side of the bath. I must have been 4. Her toddler bottom was at mouth level, so - of course - I took a bite. I can still feel the texture – not the flavour but the texture. Becky burst into tears and Mum told me off. “Sorry”, I said, “I couldn’t resist”.

People have been finding Becky irresistible ever since. Only in her last months did I discover quite how much I loved her. I also discovered quite how much she was loved by others. By so many others. She was blessed with an extraordinary capacity for connection and relationship. Even during the illness that killed her, she would chat away to nurses and other patients, brightening their days as she so brightened ours.

Her work was an entirely natural extension and expression of who she was. When she and Hannah founded The Literary Consultancy, I thought it was just cute – clever - that it could be known as TLC. As so often, I underestimated her. The name was a brilliant expression of a profound insight. Becky understood that would-be writers really do need tender loving care. They need to be handled tenderly, to be read, and responded to, in careful detail and with loving sensitivity. She saw the relation between amateur writer and professional reader in psychoanalytic, therapeutic, terms – which she had come to understand through engagement with her own periods of depression. Her deeply personal experience infused her work, giving her private and professional lives a deep coherence.

Becky approached dying in much the same way that she had lived: with an incredible openness to, and willingness to express, her own spontaneous feelings, and a wonderfully reflective awareness of the needs of others. She had herself lost two very close friends and it was extraordinary to see her using that experience to help others deal with losing her. Right up to the end, she remained the perfect aunt to my children Danny and Lillie. People talk about her bravery in the face of death. What I saw was wisdom, and love.

She loved and she was loved. By all of us, of course, but our beloved Cosis’ devotion to Becky in her times of need was quite extraordinary. From the moment it became clear that she was seriously ill, Cosis made sure that Becky was not left alone for one moment. Cosis’ physical and emotional stamina, her capacity to tolerate and contain Becky’s distress and fear and anger, were utterly amazing. And by our mother, who put her life on hold, seizing every moment to be with her darling daughter – at home, at hospital at the hospice, by day and night. Becky was blessed to be so loved – and she knew it.

When we learned that she was on the way out, friends urged me not to leave unsaid anything I might regret not telling her. There was no need. Becky and I had been talking honestly about everything important for a long time already. She taught me how to do that.