“Mum's mobile was the most immoblie cell phone in the world. It often lived on the top of the bookshelf closest to the front door. It was there so she'd see it before she left the house. The trouble was, Mum was alwayd leaving the house in a mad rush and the mobile stayed put.”

“Are you close to your family?'I considered it. 'Close' was one way of putting it. 'We're close,' I said cautiously. 'But we're very mean to each other. This morning I told my mum that if she didn't stop acting old I was going to lobby for a law on euthanasia, so a bus would come round every Monday morning and take away all the old people who complained that they couldn't hear the telly or see the buttons on their mobile phone or that they had a pain in their hip, and put a bullet in their heads. But we're close.”

“She had an English boyfriend who called her more often than she needed to hear from him, a savings account, a mobile phone, an Oyster Card, and a place to live that made her feel as if she was in a movie. She was a London girl.”

“Inspiration was a temperamental guest. It dropped in unannounced, then left without so much as a goodbye, slipping out a window in the dead of night or sauntering out the front door, leaving the house empty, drafty, and cold.”

“The mobile phone acts as a cursor to connect the digital and physical.”

“I couldn't imagine it, living a pristine life in this big Georgian house and everything. It seemed heinous. So I left him. I thought I'd go mad, if I stayed.”