Be good. Do something good.

If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learned how to crochet," I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best.

Maybe we've grown out of each other.

We're not ourselves, are we? I'm certainly not myself, not anymore. And you're not either. You don't seem yourself. Not as I remember you.

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.

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.