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.

He put one hand lightly on the back of her neck and simultaneously she placed one hand lightly on his hip, and they kissed in the street as all around them people hurried home in the summer light, and it was the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know. This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over.

Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

I think you’re amazing,’ someone says to someone else, but it doesn’t matter who, because they’re all amazing really. People are amazing.

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.

Dont run before you can walk

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.