We now live three blocks apart and see each other every day. After Paula died in 1992, my relationship with Nicolas changed and we became closer. His relationship with the body that was his sister taught me about real love that it's about acceptance and taking care. I remember one day walking into Paula's room and Nicolas was changing her diaper and talking to her. I moved her from a Madrid hospital to our California home. She was hospitalised and lapsed into a coma. In 1991 my daughter Paula became gravely ill.

I spend 10-14 hours writing, but without the infrastructure he provides I wouldn't be able to do it. He then takes care of me for the rest of the day. The dog wakes us at 6.30am and Willie gives her breakfast, and I wait for him to bring me coffee in bed. Our marriage thrives because he is a great wife. I didn't immediately think he was 'the one' - I just wanted to have sex with him, and so we had a fling. Seven years later while on a book tour, I met an American lawyer, Willie Gordon. It evolved into my first book, The House of the Spirits, which became a best seller. At that time I was living in Venezuela and wrote him a letter recalling the stories he had told me, like how the tables in the house would dance because my clairvoyant grandmother's spirit was moving them. In 1981, I learnt my grandfather was dying. That experience taught me to have control of my own money and my own life. I realised I did not want to grow old with this man, but when I wanted to leave with the children I couldn't, as everything was in his name. A year later my daughter Paula was born and three years after that, my son, Nicolas.Īt first Miguel and I grew together but in time we grew apart. That was enough, as I never imagined anyone would, and at 20 I got married. The real attraction was that he liked me. I needed to graduate from high school, and so Miguel, an engineering student, came to tutor me in chemistry. My family had been living in Beirut, but when the Suez Crisis erupted my stepfather sent my brothers and myself back to my grandfather's house in Chile. I was 15 when I met my first husband, Miguel Frias. Until I was 21 my rebellious nature caused terrible clashes between us, but he now respects me intellectually and I adore him. He was the sort of man who would open the door for a woman but have no respect for her opinions.

Isabel allende daughter paula