“My box bedroom can only fit a bed and a wardrobe but it was my whole world. My only personal space to think and dream, to cry and laugh and wait until I became old enough to do all the things I wasn't allowed to do.”

“All I need isbackup. He’s the little angel that sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear,“You can do it!” It’s funny. I’m thirty years old now and I still feel like a littlegirl. I’m still looking around to check and see what other people are doingto make sure I’m not completely different; I’m still looking around for help,hoping for a quick nudge and a whisper of advice. But I can’t seem to be ableto catch anybody’s eye. Nobody else around me seems to be looking aroundand wondering what to do. Why is it that I feel like I’m the only person whois confused and concerned about the choices I’ve made and where I’mheaded? Everywhere I look, I see people just getting on with it. Maybe Ishould just follow suit and get on with it.”

“I wake up in the morning and I feel like I’m missing something. I knowthat there’s something not right, and it takes me a while to remember what itis . . . then I remember. My best friend is gone. My only friend. It was silly ofme to rely so much on one person.”

“I think I wished for you all of my life.”

“At first we had so much to catch up on we were talking a hundred words a second, barely even listening to the ends of one another's sentences before moving onto the next. And there was laughing. Lots of laughing. Then the laughing stopped and there was this silence. What the hell was it?It was like the world stopped turning in that instant. Like everyone around us had disappeared. Like everything at home was forgotten about. It was as if those few minutes on this world were created just for us and all we could do was look at each other. It was like he was seeing my face for the first time. He looked confused but kind of amused. Exactly how I felt. Because I was sitting on the grass with my best friend Alex, and that was my best friend Alex's face and nose and eyes and lips, but they seemed different. So I kissed him. I seized the moment and I kissed him,”

“Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was having with myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.”

“Dreams should make you think, ‘If I had the guts to do it and I didn’t care what anybody thought, this I what I’d really do’.”