Twenty years ago, Tracey Trussell went to pick up her daughters, Emma, eight, and Maddie, five, from Hartsbourne primary school in Bushey, and was greeted with a very sad-faced Emma, who told her: “My best friend Lissy makes me really cross – every time I say something, she always says ‘So what?’"

That night, after the children had gone to bed, Tracey sat down, inspired, and, a few hours later, had produced a children’s story called, appropriately, So What!, which has now been published as a beautiful children’s book, after she sent it off to a publisher on a whim having rediscovered it in a drawer two decades later.

“What she said to me became the first line of the story,“ explains Tracey, 53, from Oxhey Village.

“It all sort of flooded out. But obviously the rest of the stuff in the story – the camel with six humps and the magic wand and the aliens! – came entirely out of my imagination.“

So What! tells the story of Daisy – who also has a very big imagination – whose so-called best friend Lissy greets every exciting thing that Daisy tells her with a very disdainful ‘So what?’, shattering Daisy’s confidence, until one day, she learns to stand up for herself and have confidence in herself.

“It’s about treating other people as you would like to be treated yourself,“ explains Tracey, who works as a lettings agent in Bushey and part-time as a graphologist in the evenings. “Daisy feels good about herself at the end, she’s given her friend a taste of her own medicine.“

The illustrations in the book, by Neil Price, are spectacular and really bring to life Daisy’s, and Tracey’s, imaginary worlds – and have won over Tracey’s younger daughter Maddie, who is now a 25-year-old artist herself.

“She really appreciates them,“ says Tracey, “and Emma, who’s now 28, loves it too, they think it’s great.“