The boy shall have a proper beating,' said Cecil. 'But I beat him already,' I said, 'and don't tell me I didn't do it properly. I'm touchy about these things.

Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.

I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I’m joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I’m glad I’m the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.

When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I'd tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it. Rose screams on the note B flat. We don't need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork.

When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.