For some time now she has had the conviction that life is about to change if only because it must. . . .

A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.

She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy

This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles.

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

I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.' 'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret.

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.