“That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.”

“She jumped off my bed and shoved my stack of books over; thousands of words crashed onto the floor.”

“He promised he wouldn’t try and take my virtue in my sleep, but it seemed he had no problem licking it out of me in the morning.”

“He gestured at me. “That’s Belly.”“Belly?” she repeated.“Yup. She’s my girlfriend.”I think I choked out loud.”

“She was the quintessential twenty-first-century woman: She could build a high-rise in a Chanel suit and Jimmy Choos, give lessons in multitasking, and freeze the heart of the coldest competitor with a single unblinking gaze over the rim of her ebony-framed reading glasses. But that persona was like a bodysuit that she pulled on at eight in the morning and peeled out of at five in the afternoon.”

“She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump.”