“Mum turns back to face the screen, and I realise I’m still nodding. Anxiety Girl in action. She has the power to nod until she makes the connection she so desperately needs, or until her head falls off, whichever comes first.”

“Angry Girl has no cavity. She has teeth.”

“He’s still singing to himself, eyes closed, pretending, I think, that I’m someone else.I shout in his ear again. ‘So you can’t just lay down and die?’He doesn’t open his eyes, but he nods. ‘You can’t just lay down and die”

“She was thin like Kylie, but she had a manic energy like Shane, so it was probably drugs.That’s just the means though, the end result is the same. She was one of us. Her, Shane, Marty, Roger, Kylie, me.People being eaten alive from the inside out.”

“And what really struck me was that the woman still meant so much to Grandad after all of those years. She burned in his memory in a way that she never would have if he’d left his wife and sons for her. It got me thinking about how sometimes it’s the people we don’t get to have who stay with us the most.”

“At seventeen, I’m in-between. Staring at the carnival from a distance. Not sure if I want to go forward and become an adult; liking the view too much to turn back.”

“When I come over the top of the dune I see the ocean and I feel like I’m seeing it for the first time.Today it’s blue, straight and simple. Raw blue.”