It can be difficult to interact casually with Kathy Evans. There is the sense that the birth of her daughter, Caoimhe, a Down's syndrome baby, so deeply shocked and bewildered her that she remains a landscape of bruises - you don't know where to tread, or how softly. Her reactions are so rapid and defensive and her replies so unconsciously despairing that all that is left is the pity with which she further justifies her defensiveness. The publication of Tuesday's Child, her lyrical and frequently disturbing memoir of Caoimhe's birth and the impact it has had on her life, has confronted the award-winning journalist with a further loss of control: she is now exposed to personal scrutiny.
'I know the parents of disabled children are treated differently by other parents because I treated parents of children with disabilities differently,' says Evans, a former features writer with The Sunday Age in Melbourne. The book came from a series of articles that in 2004 won her a Walkley Award, a prize recognising excellence in the Australian media.
'I'd be more animated when I talked to them, or avoid them. And when I talked to them, I'd feel sorry for them, or think, 'I'm glad it's not me,' and go home to my two beautiful daughters. I have found people assume me to be more tired - which I am - or that Caoimhe is more work, which she is. I did feel the victim of pity, which I hated.'
Evans, her partner Conor, a biomedical engineer specialising in electroencephalography (EEG), and their three daughters live in an old piggery on a hill in County Down, Northern Ireland. 'It's picturesque in a very Irish way,' she says. 'The downside to all this beauty is the weather - it's bloody cold.'
In some respects, she could be speaking of herself. While she may no longer be the provocative blonde of her youth, she remains graceful in ways she doesn't appreciate. When asked if she has been praised for her beauty, she is amused. 'Um, I had my moments as a teenager. And I suppose looks were very important to me when I was younger. But no, not now. I don't wear makeup and I go to the hairdresser's once a year. I'm comfortable with myself, with a healthy vanity. I grimace at the sight of wrinkles, but I don't do anything about it - no anti-wrinkle nonsense for me. Just a certain wistfulness.'
Her reply isn't entirely sincere.