“I wake in the night. Or sometimes I don't wake in the night. It hardly seems to make a difference.”

“I don't want you to be interested in my life. I want you to be interested in me.”

“If I had to ask him to ask me, it wasn't going to work as an expression of concern. Like when you ask someone if they love you - if you have to ask them, they don't. Or not enough. Not the way you want them to.”

“It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away.”

“The feeling of pleasure was like nothing I had ever felt before and I wanted his hands to feel me all over as he sat there groping me and I was left wondering was it him or the drug making me feel so good?”

“We laughed and laughed and passed the bong around each other taking turns to burn our lungs. The room was smokier than ever before and it was late in the afternoon when I realised I was stuck.I was stuck to the sofa like glue. My whole body sank deeper and deeper into the material. My blood felt like liquid lead in my limbs as if lifting my arm could not be possible without a powerful crane. My mind drifted to the big cranes you see on building sites and I imagined it attempting to lift my arm as it buckled under the weight.I closed my eyes unable to hold my eyelids open anymore. My body sank even deeper as if the sofa was melting chocolate and my body heat was melting it beneath me. It began to feel like thick treacle beneath me as if it would stick to me making it harder for me to move or get up then I felt his hand again.”

“I held his hand tighter and still squeezing I leant across and kissed his lips, the lips that apologised for his huff as they lovingly connected with mine, and I strained to keep at least one eye on the road.”