“I cannot believe that I am actually excited at the sight of him. It has been long since anyone has made me feel THIS...and even though I know I've avoided THIS for fear of getting hurt, there's something about him that makes me want to trust him.”

“And suddenly I realize that although I've never thought about being in love with Nick before, all the right ingredients are there. I fancy him. I like him. He's my friend. He makes me laugh. I love being with him. And I start to feel all sort of warm and glowy, and screw the other stuff. Screw the stuff about him having no money, and living in a bedsit, and not being what I thought I wanted. I'm just going to go with this and see where it ends up. I mean, no one says I have to marry the guy, for God's sake.”

“But the thing is, since I've met someone, everyone started banging on and on about my not-so-secret admirer. I'd started to find it quite exciting. I'd forgotten that I don't get involved because the pain might not be worth it. All that flattery and attention distracted me from any pain that might have been lurking around the corner. But course, the pain got me in the end. It always does.”

“Put it like this: show me a man who knows how to treat a woman like dirt, and I will faint with delight at his feet and allow him to treat me like the doormat he so clearly wants me to be.”

“I want someone who will adore me so much that they cannot even walk past me without touching me in some way. I want someone who will worship me, even when.. I'm sitting around in fluffy slippers with no makeup on and hair scraped back.I'm sick and tired of being on my own. Most of the time I'm fine. Some of the time I even quite enjoy it. But at this precise moment in time I'm fed up with it. I've had enough..”

“Every time we try and get it together, something happens to pull us apart, and I can't help but feel that this is just isn't meant to be. And God knows I'm happy enough on my own, but tell me, is this how am I supposed to carry on?”

“On the way back to the office- I get a cab, on expenses, naturally- I decide that I could quite like Ed. Maybe I could even fancy him, and maybe the fact that I'm not thinking about him that much when I'm not with him is a good thing, maybe it means this is a proper relationship, not just lust, or the equivalent to a teenage crush. Because quite frankly I'm sick of falling madly in love and spending twenty-four hours a day thinking about them and crying with misery when they don't phone. I'm sick of being the kind of girl who, when they say jump, says how high. I'm sick of always, always being the one to fall in love and get hurt. And maybe this is how it should be, getting on with my life and not putting all my energies into a relationship.”