“I am one of those servants – butlers usually – who respectfully points out when their master is about to do something stupid: "You should probably only burn the document once the blackmail has been completed, m' lady.”

“I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.”

“Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.Her legs are crossed.I wait for her to speak.'I have two special skills,' she says.She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.'Blackmail,' she says.She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.'And pyromania.'I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.'Right,' I say.'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'I feel powerless. She is in a throne.'Okay,' I say.”

“I spin around on the swivel chair and look up at the ceiling; Oliver being Oliver being Oliver being Oliver. I am suddenly aware of the separation between my-actual-self and myself-as-seen-by-others. Who would win in an arm wrestle? Who is better-looking? Who has the higher IQ?”

“The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her."I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear." She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.”

“That's a big love letter," she says, squinting. I know what I'm going to say and for a moment I wish there was a film crew documenting my day-to-day life: "I've got a big heart," I say.”

“Seducing Jordana was solid – she's got such high standards – but when I finally got the snogs in it was all worth it." I transform Jordana's blather into high-level discourse: Lounging in a post-osculatory glow, I knew that all those months of hard chivalry had been worthwhile.”