Patty recounts in the Toast how she flew to Virginia to meet Andrews for the first time and discovered that she was in a wheelchair, “her blonde hair was carefully coiffed around her pale, flawless skin, her atrophied legs capped by pink slippers. Patty and publisher Pocket Books realised they needed a sequel, and fast.

We want them to escape and find their place in the world, where they never have to eat a powdered doughnut again.” “I think readers root for the children in general. “I remember when Flowers first came out – teenagers everywhere were reading it and the more press it received about being ‘scandalous’ or ‘shocking’ only piqued interest, until it became a worldwide phenomenon,” says Jen Long, who now edits the VC Andrews franchise. Once the book was published in November 1979 with that iconic cutout jacket, readers quickly agreed. She told her friend, a literary agent who had described it to her as “awful and fabulous”, that it was “some sort of brilliant”. Its editor, Ann Patty, has written of how on first encountering it, she stayed up “until 2am, reading it in one long gulp”.

In her 1978 pitch letter, Andrews described her novel as a “fictionalised version of a true story” about “real children who struggled to survive under almost unendurable circumstances … basically a horror story”.

‘Wicked sense of humour’ … Virginia Andrews Flowers in the Attic inspired the band name for Amanda Palmer’s band the Dresden Dolls, while Gillian Flynn has said that the mother and grandmother characters begat her addiction to “wicked women”: “It felt so new and stunning to me – these witches who seemed quite real.” There have been two film adaptations and a stage play, as well as sequels, prequels and retellings penned by both Andrews and Andrew Neiderman, the ghostwriter who took on Andews’ mantle after her death. Andrews’ gothic tale of incest, poisoning and dark family secrets has sold more than 40m copies. That “deranged swill” proved irresistible. I could have stopped you if I’d really wanted to.” Somehow, the incestuous teenagers acquire a romantic tinge: can Chris and Cathy escape, and will they make it as a couple despite everything that’s against them? They end up trapped in the attic for more than three years, where poisoned doughnuts kill off one of them, and where the overheated drama somehow leads Chris to rape his sister – but it’s fine, says Cathy, “you didn’t rape me.

Flowers in the attic trilogy