“Sorry, I thought I saw a guilt trip looming up,’ said Clements. ‘I had a Catholic upbringing - spent a week in a monastery once. My mother – a devout woman all her days, God bless her – thought it would do me good to be exposed to truly good people who had denied themselves everything to follow God.’ Clements snorted and turned to look out of the car window.‘I take it, it didn’t work?’‘I don’t think there was a single one of them – apart from maybe a little Irishman, who had never known anything else - who wasn’t on some kind of guilt trip. They hadn’t given up anything at all: they were running away from things; hiding; the lot of them; and mainly from their real selves. Show me a monk and I’ll show you one screwed-up individual with a past.”

“I hadn’t had a mother since I was two, and from then until seven I had believed God was someone who had run off with her and was living with her somewhere else... (God took your mother, dear, because he needed her more than you do) which had never endeared him to me”

“I had never been scared of deployments or of war, but now I was scared to leave. I didn’t want to leave her. When I met her, I saw her as someone else who needed saving but she had saved me. She had given me hope when I had given up on everything in my life.”

“When I met her, I saw her as someone else who needed saving but she had saved me. She had given me hope when I had given up on everything in my life.”

“Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?”“From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn’t really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like ‘happy’ and ‘good’ will never find her.”“You don’t want her to be happy and good?”“I’m not sure what’s really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin.”

“For a while I thought I had lost her for good, but in our own fucked up way we hadswallowed our pride and reached out to one another. We both knew it would never be easy, butwe were willing to try. I knew that Kate wasn't universally loved by the Pack, but they owed me.I bled for them, I fixed their petty squabbles. I had given them everything, they would give methis one thing. Or I would break it all apart.”