“She dragged me across the floor, stopping from time to time only to kick me. I didn't know our cows too could be so inhuman.”

“I didn't have time to lose it. I didn't have time to lie down in the corner shop and scream and beat the floor until my hands bled. I didn't have time to miss Jack. Stroma kept on chattering away and getting excited over novelty spaghetti shapes and finding the joy in every little thing, and it occurred to me even then that she was probably looking after me, too.”

“You should have dragged my butt out of bed.""Your butt's too big to drag," Taylor said.Hayley sat on the floor, facing her sister. "That means yours is too. We have the same butt, remember?""Don't remind me," Taylor said. "I see it every time you walk in front of me.”

“I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.”

“and afterward, after it was done, it was too much, and I felt like I was going to... I don't know.... explode, and it was just too much, I had to let it out you know? I had to-I interrupted her hysteria It's okay, I understand.That was a lie. I didn't get her cutting at all. She'd done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die - she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet - physical pain - was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.”

“Mrs Bawden yanked me away from the table and dragged me across the food hall. I tried to twist away from her, but she had a grip like a python on steroids.”