She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.

She realises that if she is to save the show she is going to have to improvise a rousing speech, one of the many Henry V moments that make up her working life.

I applied for the University of Life. Didn't get the grades.

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.

Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad.' 'It's the most we can hope for.

In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.