“She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“Good God, 'the elusive thing'. She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“She no longer think that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates. but the combination of the retsina and sun made Emma feel sentimental and light-headed. She reached for her roller skates.”

“She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.”

“She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.”

“She had got rid of his black bedsheets, the beer mats, secretly culled his underpants and there were fewer of his famous 'Summer Roasts', but even so, she was reaching the limits of how much it's possible to change a man.”