As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her.

…and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.

She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

So - whatever happened to you?' 'Life. Life happened.

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love 'Tender is the Night,' and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality.

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