“He was what the egotistical part of me had always longed for: danger, sexiness, popularity, style, unpredictability. The kind of man who'd always keep me guessing. Just one night with him and i'd already started to wonder if perhaps i'd spent the last two years in a comfortable coma.”

“I wondered if perhaps I'd gone mad. I had known this man less than twenty-four hours and already I wanted to raise his children.”

“I didn't know his age or how he liked his tea, I was wearing a terrible coat and I was drunk as a stoat - but this moment felt like it. The one I'd been waiting patiently for since I was a little girl. I'd worked so hard, for so long, at being ok with being single, but all of the things I'd told myself about independence were disappearing rapidly into the cold night. Right now, he felt like the only person who mattered in the whole world.”

“How do you feel about going on a date with me? I'm abroad for another two weeks; you've got plenty of time to prepare yourself. It will be the best night of your life, of course.”

“It was the sexual chemistry I wanted more of. It was electric. I'd forgotten what it was like to be with someone who excited you in every sense of the word, who thrilled and frightened you in equal measure.”

“I was at Gatwick and I was a mess: breathlessly excited, horribly nervous and hoping, praying, that this might be it. That the man who was belted up preparing for touchdown would be the man I would spend the next sixty years picking up from airports, missing him, loving him, feeding him and, all things going well, having a fair bit of sex with him.”

“I'd woken up this morning and nearly crapped my pants with fear. Whoever invented Internet dating deserved to be strung up: it was a terrible idea.”