Sarra Manning

“When will being independent and strong and not following the pack and daring to be different and being brave in my opinions, my fashion choices and my hair colour be enough?”

“Despite their difference, because of their differences, they were a perfect mismatched set. Two sides of the same tarnished penny.”

“Like, if you're right for someone then shouldn't everything fall into place really easily..?”

“Maybe relationships shouldn't be such hard work...”

“Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. ‘Grace, about bloody time,’ he’d say, and make it sound like an endearment.But she couldn’t call Vaughn, because she’d left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he’d have left her eventually if she hadn’t done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through.That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn’t solve on her own, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who could help . . .”

“She knew exactly what he meant. Despite their differences, because of their differences, they were a perfect mismatched set. Two sides of the same tarnished penny. An out-of-step Fred and Ginger. Vaughn was just as fucked up as she was - he was just so much better at hiding it.”

“Anyway, I don’t want anyone else, I just want Vaughn.’ It was good to finally say it, as if Grace said it out loud then maybe the universe would get the message and send him back to her.”

“I’m going that way too. I live in Crouch End. Do you want to share a black cab?’Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn’t afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn’t the reason why she declined. ‘No,thank you. I’m perfectly all right with catching the tube.’‘OK, tube it is,’ Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn’t sense the huge ‘kindly bugger off’ vibes thatNeve was sure she was emitting. ‘You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?’‘You apologised, why would I still be mad at you?’‘One day we’ll laugh about this. When little Tommy asks how we met, I’ll say, “Well, son, I threw an ice cube at your mother, then slapped herarse, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”

“When I saw you on the stairs before, I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he whispered against her skin.‘Spotty, not beautiful,’ she corrected gently, running her finger along his crooked nose. ‘Now you, you’re beautiful.’‘I even missed your inferiority complex.’ Max smiled and shifted against her.‘Not being inferior. It’s a point of fact. I’m covered in zits,’ Neve said and she didn’t know why she felt the need to share that with Max but then she was glad that she had because he was kissing each one of the angry red bumps along her forehead and chin and cheeks, even though a few of them were starting to suppurate. ‘Don’t do that, it’s completely unhygienic. Kiss my mouth instead.”

“I’d think about you and how I didn’t want us to end. It’s complicated…’Max still held her, his thumbs stroking the spot on her wrists where her pulse was thundering away. ‘Uncomplicate it then. Did you miss me?’‘Of course I did! I’ve missed you so much, I hurt from it.’Then, and only then, did Max release her but it was only so Neve could wind her arms around his neck because they were kissing. She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but all of a sudden there was the familiar but shocking touch of lips on lips.”

“Max didn't take his hands off her. As they walked to where he'd parked the hired car, he kept his arm round her shoulders, even though he was carrying her cases in his other hand and they kept bumping him.”

“And as the recession continues and our prospects look bleaker and bleaker, I’m excited. I look to the past to see what our future will be like. And in times of economic hardship and harsh governments, of pointless wars and mass unemployment, there was pop art and there was punk, there was hip hop and grafitti, there was acid house and riot grrrl. There was art and music and books that could bring you to your knees with their utter perfection. Because, when everything else is gone, all we’re left with is our imaginations.”

“Adorkable is a freeform, loose-knit, organic network of like-minded souls who might get pushed to the ground for the way we think and the way we look and because we’re not afraid of who we are, but my God we’re looking up at the stars.”

“Generation Y are everything you feared. They’re everything your worst nightmares conjured up. They’re lazy, apathetic, unoriginal, scared of innovation, scared of difference, just plain scared. They binge drink. The confuse sex for intimacy. They definitely couldn’t tell you the capital cities of more than five countries. And they really think that Justin Bieber is the Second Coming. Only fifty per cent of Generation Y own more than two books and, yes, they listen to music, but they download it from the internet because content is free, yo. Want, take, have is their battle cry. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my generation and my generation is royally screwed up.”

“I was rolling my eyes so hard that I was sure one of my retinas had just detached itself”

“That was the deal with the really good-looking boys: they automatically assumed you were pining and panting for them and wouldn’t be satisfied until you’d had their babies, no matter how ugly their personalities might be.”

“God! Molly, will you just stop and listen to me?" he begged, trying to wrap himself around me again.I pushed him away. "What could you possibly say that I'd want to hear?" I demanded, slapping his lying arms away."I love you," he pleaded.And it broke my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. Because it was only now, when I knew that I could never stand to be near him again, that he was telling me what I'd always wanted to hear.”

“What the hell was an acquisitions consultant? An arms dealer? A white slave trader?”

“Secrets aren’t the same as lying,' Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common.”

“thought about having one last kiss, but in the end the only way she could leave was to walk away without looking back.”

“Then May gave way to June, and it felt as if time was slipping through her fingers.”

“How strange that the years and ocean between us have brought us closer together.”

“So even the transatlantic static couldn´t mask the lifeless quality of his words.”

“It was another of those big life-changing moments when you didn´t know what the next ten seconds would bring but you knew that nothing would ever be the same after.”

“Secrets aren´t the same as lying.”

“And once again, there was a table and several worlds between them.”

“I realised something else tonight. Something about pancakes.’‘What about them?’ ‘We both got so obsessed about that first pancake being thrown away that we forgot something really important,’ Max explained. ‘That first pancake tastes just as good as all the other ones. It’s not its fault that it was first in line and the pan wasn’t hot enough so it got a bit lumpy and misshapen.’‘And when you’re really famished that first pancake tastes better than all the ones that come after it,’ Neve said, and then she couldn’t wait any longer. Her arms were around Max before she’d even finished forming the thought, but his arms were around her too in that exact same moment.Just having him there to hold, warm and solid and real, was enough for five seconds, and then she was peppering his face with kisses – his forehead, his eyebrows, the tip of his crooked nose, along his cheekbones until she reached the glittering prize of his mouth.Sometimes Neve thought that her appetite was the most robust thing about her, and she didn’t kiss Max so much as she devoured him. Graceless, messy kisses without any thought or reason, but simply because she hungered for him. Kissed him with everything she had and everything she was, and she didn’t know why she could kiss Max and have him kiss her back with the same fierceness but still be greedy for the next kiss and the one after that and the one after that and the one…”

“I sat there listening to him talk and talk and I realised something really important.I thought I was in love with him for all those years but it turned out I was in love with the idea of William. The actual reality was a bit of an anti-climax.I thought, well, William would never shove the word WAG into pop songs to make me laugh and he wouldn’t bite the chocolate off chocolate-covered strawberries for me and he’d never, ever watch a film with Sandra Bullock in it, unless it was a Shakespeare adaptation and then he’d spend the entire film listing all the historical inaccuracies and he’d never go down on me for half an hour because he’d lost a game of Scrabble. Point of fact, I can’t imagine William doing anything that would mess up his hair, and he’s started popping the collars of his shirts and have I mentioned that he’s not you? He’s not you, Max, and that’s why I’m actually really pleased that he’s engaged and he’s moving to Warwickshire so I don’t have a constant reminder of what an idiot I’ve been.”

“You should never let secrets fester.”

“It would be like Cinderella moaning about getting blisters from her glass slippers.”

“Maybe relationships shoudn´t be such hard work. Like, if you´re right for someone then shouldn´t everything fall into place really easily?”

“Was there a better sound in the world than a champagne cork popping? Hell, no.”

“This time she´d totally own the goodbye and leave him wanting more.”

“It felt like he´d taken a piece of her heart with him in his carry-on luggage”

“Each kiss was like biting into the richest darkest chocolate and pausing to savour the taste.”

“Esto era lo peor de tener una relación con alguien, incluso una relación fingida. Te abres, le permites entrar, y cuando todo termina, tienen todas las municiones que necesitan para destruirte por completo.”

“1- No des tu apellido, número telefónico o dirección electrónica. 2-Deja que Chloe sepa dónde te reunirás con él y envíale un mensaje cuando estés de camino a casa, así ella sabrá que no has sido drogada con Roofie y secuestrada. 3- No hables de dietas, pérdida de peso o tu loco régimen de gimnasia. 4- Has muchas preguntas e intenta parecer interesada cuando él responda, incluso si es más aburrido que el lodo. 5- Ofrece compartir la cuenta, pero no lo fuerces demasiado. 6- No te entregues. Un beso en la boca es aceptable pero solo usa lengua si una segunda cita ya ha sido acordada.7-Comprueba todas las salidas en tu entrada, así podrás hacer una rápida escapada mientras él está haciendo pipi. 8-Intenta divertirte un poco.”

“—Lo siento —murmuró ella—. Estoy bien si sé de antemano que van a haber alimentos que no puedo comer, pero cuando se me toma por sorpresa... —Decayó, porque nadie realmente entendía que la comida no era sólo el combustible o que no había nada de malo en un poco de lo que imaginaba; cada comida, cada bocado era una batalla, una guerra de nunca acabar.”

“Happiness really isn't that hard to find.”

“We don't stop, not even when we reach the finish line. It's a journey for life, Neve.”

“Another reason why people take me seriously is because I never apologise even when - no, especially when I should,’ he told her coolly. ‘No pleases, thank yous or sorries - remember that and you might have that interesting year I was talking about.”

“Being drunk really brought out her inner vicious bitch.”

“You are bad and mean and I'm going to spit on your cupcakes.”

“You're in my light and this is my special spot so go away.”

“Can this really call itself a cake when its main ingredients are cheese and carrots?”

“You'll always be a fat girl. You don't know how to be anything else.”

“The Ad♥rkable Manifesto 1. We have nothing to declare but our dorkiness.2. Jumble sales are our shopping malls.3. Better to make cookies than be a cookie-cutter.4. Suffering doesn’t necessarily improve you but it does give you something to blog about.5. Experiment with Photoshop, hair dye, nail polish and cupcake flavours but never drugs.6. Don’t follow leaders, be one.7. Necessity is the mother of customisation.8. Puppies make everything better.9. Quiet girls rarely make history.10. Never shield your oddness, but wear your oddness like a shield.”

“He was old-fashioned looking, Grace decided. Not just the suit, which made him look as though he should be taking the air in one of those fifties movies on the French Riviera, but as if he was the second male lead in one of those same films. Not matinee-idol handsome enough to get the girl, but good enough to be the best friend of the one who got the girl. Or the arch nemesis of the one who got the girl who had his comeuppance ten minutes before the credits began to roll.”

“Excuse me?’ she spat, and as Dougie and Celia always pointed out, it didn’t matter that Neve never swore because she could make ‘Excuse me?’ sound like ‘Go fuck yourself.”

“How is dear Charlotte?’ Celia asked sweetly, then launched into an account of how they’d been having their usual ‘Fucking shut up’, ‘No, you fucking shut up’, row a couple of evenings ago, when Yuri had opened the front door of their flat to scream up the stairs, ‘Why don’t both of you fucking shut up?”