My narcissist mother abandoned me as a child for her lover. When I finally stood up to her, this was her shocking act of vengeance: DAISY GOODWIN

A few years before my mother's death in 2013, I sent her a huge bunch of flowers on Mother's Day. When I rang her to see if the bouquet had arrived, she sounded grateful but puzzled. 'The flowers are lovely, but I don't understand why you sent them.'

When I pointed out it was Mother's Day, she was surprised. I realised it was because she didn't think of herself as a mother. 

She saw herself as a free spirit, a creative force, a woman who lived life to the full, but she never saw her children as part of her life's achievements.

My mother, the writer Jocasta Innes, had so many talents. I still meet people who tell me they taught themselves to cook with her Pauper's Cookbook, or that they stencilled their hallway with the help of her bestselling decorating book, Paint Magic. They will say: 'How lucky you are to have had such an amazing mother!'

But the truth is that while my mother was amazing in many ways, being a mother was not one of them.

I remember the day when my mother told me she wasn't going to live with us any more. I was five and my brother was three.

We were sitting in the back of my grandmother's Mini Clubman and my mother leaned over and told us that she was never coming back. We would still see her at weekends and in the holidays, but from now on we would be living with my father.

What she didn't tell us was that she had left because she had fallen in love with a younger man.

This man who eventually became my stepfather adored a sexy older woman, not the mother of two young children. When the crunch came, my mother chose him over us.

As a child I just got used to this new reality. It didn't occur to me that my mother had made a choice not to be a mother.

I grew up shuttling across the country from my father's house in London to where my mother lived in Swanage, Dorset, every other weekend and half of the holidays.

As I got older, I began to notice that other people's mothers would remember their birthdays without being reminded, or would instantly recognise their children's voices on the phone.

My friends' mothers knew what subjects they were studying and could always remember how old they were.

But as my mother never sent us to bed, or made us do our homework, or told us off for not brushing our teeth, I felt that I wasn't doing too badly.

It was only when I had my first child that I realised exactly what sort of a mother mine was. As I looked at my baby I knew that nothing, not even Brad Pitt in a thong, would persuade me to choose him over her.

I knew I was responsible for my baby daughter's happiness, and it was clear that my mother had never felt that way about me.

She loved dressing me up when I was a baby – 'You can't imagine how cute you were darling' – but she was less interested as I grew into a dumpy and resentful little girl.

She published her first book, The Pauper's Cookbook, when I was 12. When I opened it up, I read in the foreword that Jocasta Innes lives in Swanage with her two children. This was true, she had two daughters with my stepfather, but her bio made no mention of her two older children who lived in London.

It sounds like a small thing but at the time it felt like she was disowning me and my brother.

And in a way she was – it is hard to present yourself as a domestic goddess when you have abandoned two children.

My mother was never very interested in my career as a television producer (she didn't actually own a television) until I took over a BBC show called Home Front.

As she was now running a chain of paint shops, she wanted to be on the show.

That put me in a difficult position. I wanted to use her as I loved her work, but I didn't want to lose my job. Nepotism is not a good look – especially when you are working for a public broadcaster.

But my mother never even tried to understand my difficulty, instead she accused me of being selfish.

Was it selfish to hesitate between pleasing my mother and losing my job? I don't think so, and I know that I would do anything to make sure my daughters were happy in their work. That isn't because I am a better person, but I am only ever as happy as my unhappiest child.

I was 40-something when I published a memoir called Silver River in July 2011, which was born out of a desire to understand why my mother had left me as a child.

It wasn't a misery memoir. I wrote about how I worshipped my mother growing up, but she still felt that it was an act of betrayal.

For 18 months or so we didn't speak, but I couldn't bear the silence between us and I turned up on her birthday with a load of presents and my kids.

She accepted the presents and slowly we went back to our usual pattern of weekly dinners at her house.

My book was never mentioned again and I hoped that she had forgiven me for writing it, just as I had forgiven her for leaving.

But after her death, when I read the terms of her will I realised I was wrong.

She divided her estate – the proceeds of selling her house in London's Brick Lane, a wreck which she had done up and was now worth millions – between my three siblings, leaving me £5,000 ($6,500) and a portrait of my fierce maternal grandmother.

Her reasoning was that I didn't need the money as much as my siblings, but I knew it was also a punishment for pointing out that she had been a less than perfect mother. A narcissistic mother always has to have the last word.

We can't change the past, but we can change the future and I have tried to be the mother I never had to my daughters Otti, 33, and Lydia, 24. It isn't that hard, I revel in their gorgeousness. I can honestly say, at the age of 63, that I never feel jealous of their youth and beauty.

I wish I could say the same of my mother who once accused me of trying to seduce her boyfriend because I was wearing a skirt made of PVC with a revealing split (it was the 1980s, I was going to a punk-themed party).

My mother's boyfriend at the time was ten years older than me, which to my 19-year-old self made him almost prehistoric, but my mother couldn't see that. She didn't see a teenager going to a party, but a Lolita-like figure bent on seducing her man.

I have always been on the plump side (the PVC skirt was in a rare thin moment) and my mother rather enjoyed the fact that she could rock a pair of leather trousers in her 50s, while I struggled to find clothes that suited what she called my 'Junoesque' figure.

My advice to anyone who has a narcissistic mother is to try to understand what made her that way. My mother grew up during the Second World War, and like so many others she was separated from her parents for long periods of time because they were both posted overseas.

I think she had to be selfish to survive – there was no one around to take care of her so she had to make her own luck.

When she became a mother herself, she saw her children not as a responsibility to be cherished but as a threat.

I can't undo that, but it helps to know that her behaviour towards me was nothing personal.

It wasn't me she was running away from but a situation where she couldn't put her own needs first. Understanding doesn't make the hurt go away entirely, but it helps to know that it wasn't my fault.

Mothering styles have changed. I have just written a play about the late Queen Elizabeth who regularly left her children behind for months at a time when she went on royal tours. It is hard to imagine the current Princess of Wales leaving her children for more than a few days. I am sure that is an improvement.

My mother wanted to be the centre of attention. I am quite happy to let my daughters have the limelight.

I have been lucky enough to learn that, while I am proud of my achievements, my greatest success is having two daughters who know that I love them unconditionally.

I don't expect flowers on Mother's Day, or presents. It sounds corny, but the greatest gift I can have is to see them happy.

• By Royal Appointment starring Anne Reid and Caroline Quentin opens at the Theatre Royal Bath on June 5 and then goes on tour around the country.