The love spy: how I became a relationship detective

Idiscovered my mum’s diary in her bedside drawer. I read it compulsively and in secret. I was 14, that despicable adolescent age when my friends were desperate to swap body fluids and I just wanted to stay home and do magic tricks. I found the sacred book one Saturday night when my parents were out. I’d had a craving to go snooping. They always locked their bedroom door – it was no wonder I wanted to mine the off-limits zone.

The diary rocked my existence. A tome of secrets that revealed the inner sanctum of my parents’ marriage, it consumed me, and ripped apart the fairytale narrative I had been sold, instead revealing the jagged truth of their relationship. The pain was addictive. But soon, reading the diary wasn’t enough. I started hacking into their mobile phones (it was easier back then). And it was the days of the landline, so I was able to silently listen into their hushed phone calls. I was a pubescent Nancy Drew trying to crack the mystery of my parents’ marriage.

They were both, separately, carrying their own secrets, and now I was holding them all, but had no one to share them with. It didn’t take long for my parents to realise that I was carrying more than I could handle. My anxiety ratcheted, causing me to get medicated and therapised and almost sent away. Really, all I was trying to do was find the solution to fix their marriage. Pretty soon after finding the diary, my parents announced they were separating. And then they got back together. And now they’re incredibly loving grandparents who fancy the pants off each other. A modern-day love story. But the anxious detective lived on. The dissonance betCwoenetnintuheed

I had

Isaacs. Photograph: Kellie French/The Observer ‘Now, instead of infiltrating the interior lives of others, I want to nurture my own’: Daniella

‘Now I lean into the uncertainty, because, really, that’s all we’ve got’’ Photograph: Kellie French/The Observer