“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.”

“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 had a million plans. I knew what I was going to do. I had the next few years of my life all figured out.But what I didn’t know was that within a few hours all those plans would change. Ms. Know-it-all didn’t quite know it all so much then.”

“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,”

“Once again, I don’t quite know where I’m headed Steph. It seems thatevery few years I’m shoveling up the pieces of my life and starting fromscratch all over. No matter what I do or how hard I try I can’t seem to reachthe dizzy heights of happiness, success, and security, like so many people do.And I’m not talking about becoming a millionaire and living happily everafter. I just mean reaching a point in my life that I can stop what I’m doing,take a look around me, breathe a sigh of relief, and think “I’m where I wantto be now.”

“You see, I never knew what I wanted to be -- I still don;t know. All I knew was that I was supposed to get married and have babies just like my mother did and my sisters did. I wanted to do that. I met your father and I was his wife, that is who I was. Then I had my children. And then I was a mother. That's who I was. A wife and a mother but I don't know if I was or if I am of any real value. You and the boys are all grown up, so what I am now?”

“I know that. I just don’t feel it sometimes. Over there I felt like Ihadn’t a care in the world. Things felt so good and it was almost asif every muscle in my body relaxed the moment I landed there. Ihaven’t laughed so much in years. I felt like a 23-year-old, Steph. Ihaven’t felt like that much lately. I know this probably sounds weirdbut I felt like the me that I could have been.I liked that I didn’t have to look out for somebody else while Iwalked down the street. I didn’t have the fifty near heart attacks perday that I usually get when Katie goes missing or puts something inher mouth that she shouldn’t. I didn’t have to dive onto the roadand hold her back just in time from being hit by a car. I liked that Ididn’t have to give out, correct people on their pronunciation ormake threats. I liked laughing at a joke without my sleeve beingtugged at and being asked to explain. I liked having adult conversationswithout being interrupted to cheer and applaud a silly danceor the learning of a new word. I liked that I was just me, Rosie, notmummy, thinking just about me, talking about things I liked, goingplaces I liked to go without having to worry about nappy changes,bottle feeding or sleepy-head tantrums. Isn’t that awful?”