After her marriage Kathleen taught art briefly at Northampton High School (1953-1955) until her first daughter was born; the difficulty of being both a committed teacher and a mother is the subject of one of her few adult novels, No Roses Round the Door (1990). To help the family's finances, she collaborated with Michael on adventure serials, which they signed as "K. and M. Peyton." When the stories were to be issued in book form and the publishers preferred the name of a single author, the Peytons amalgamated their initials and became "K. M. Peyton." In these early novels Kathleen's maturing skills were aided by her husband's enthusiasm for adventure and knowledge of seafaring life. With characteristic modesty she described the process in a 1974 interview in The Pied Pipers as one in which Michael "thought up all the plots and I wrote them down. I didn't know what was going on half the time." Kathleen was, however, acquiring sailing experiences of her own as the Peytons sailed off the Essex coast, where they settled in an old cottage. These experiences with boats, and later with horses, stimulated Peyton's writing and, although she retained the collaborative initials "K.
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