Cuddling Was For Great Aunts And Teddy

You Know What I Can't Understand? You Have All These People Telling You All The Time How Great You Are, Smart And Funny And Talented And All That, I Mean Endlessly, I've Been Telling You For Years. So Why Don't You Believe It? Why Do You Think People Say That Stuff, Em? Do You Think It's A Conspiracy, People Secretly Ganging Up To Be Nice About You?

But At The Best Of Times She Feels Like A Character In A Muriel Spark Novel — Independent, Bookish, Sharp-minded, Secretly Romantic.

I Think I Became A Writer Because I Used To Write Letters To My Friends, And I Used To Love Writing Them. I Loved The Idea That You Can Put Marks On A Page And Send It Off, And Two Days Later, Someone Laughs Somewhere Else In The World.

She Realises That If She Is To Save The Show She Is Going To Have To Improvise A Rousing Speech, One Of The Many Henry V Moments That Make Up Her Working Life.

In Eight Years Not A Day Has Gone By When She Hasn’t Thought Of Him. She Misses Him And She Wants Him Back. I Want My Best Friend Back, She Thinks, Because Without Him Nothing Is Good And Nothing Is Right.