I tell you what it is. It's...when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in some way or another -" "Same here -" "- even if it was just 'I wish Dexter could see this' or 'where's Dexter now?' or 'Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot', you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my best friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby - I'm so happy for you, Dex. But it feels like I've lost you again.

I had made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked WOMEN, thinking it was an exhibition on the changing roles of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets.

Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me.

I work three days at home, and two days in the British Library or the London Library, just to get out of the house and hide from the children.

I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.

Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager.

As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying.