The relationship with Tod was the first, outside family relationships, which Daphne developed and it was very important to her. The letters she wrote to Tod from family holidays were confessional in nature, revealing a great need to express herself to someone she could trust and who understood her. From Birchington-on-Sea, where the joint du Maurier and Freddy Lonsdale12 families holidayed when she was thirteen, Daphne wrote to Tod of how she had been unable to bear being part of a big gang and had gone off on her own for long walks, which had led to scoldings, because she was presumed lost. She felt restless and discontented and did not even have a good book to console her