“Oh yes, We've all danced to this particular tune at one time in our lives. In my experience, the majority of women are hopeless romantics, believing that, in time, he'll realise how wonderful we are, and fall in love with us....”

“The reason for my discomfort was simple. Our story - however romantic I could make it sound in my head - sometimes sounded a little tawdry in the re-telling. There was no escaping the fact that I'd been living with the father of my child when we met; that I'd cheated on him, then left; that what James and I now shared was born out of the ruins of another relationship.”

“I realised I was tiring of our games, fed up with trying to second guess his motives, weary of trying to hold myself aloof so that I wouldn't lose face.”

“I do still love you. I don't love you enough to be able to give you the things we dreamed about and planned.”

“I tumbled into the taxi alone, closing the door closed with a dull thud before I could possibly change my mind. Not like this, I remember thinking. Whatever this thing is between us, it could only be tainted and cheapened by a semi-drunken encounter on the night of our first meeting. As the car pulled away I stared back at him. The thought that I might never see him again, that I might never know what it would feel like to be kissed by him, seemed unbearably cruel.At a crossroads, I had been faced with a choice: two possible versions of my future mapped out ahead of me. But I didn't feel like I had made any sort of decision. All I had done was run away.”

“One unforeseen advantage of having a  child was that it gave me the excuse to talk to myself to my heart's content and pretend it was for my daughters benefit.”

“We were supposed to be having a serious conversation about where we were headed - or indeed why we were headed nowhere - but it was proving impossible. Banter was the only register we seemed capable of and without it we'd lost all means of communication.”