Jules says there are three things that make you a grown-up: an eight-piece set of matching dishes; gin, vodka and whiskey in the house; and making your bed every morning. I disagree with her. I think you're officially a grown-up when you've got another half. When you don't have to live in fear of other couples. When you don't have to feel you're not good enough.

As Carrie Fisher once said in a film, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour.

That's how it is with relationships, it's a part of life, and all the great love songs and poems and films have been written by people who were standing where I was that morning as Simon shut the door. Doesn't make it any easier though.

Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.

It's about thinking that being blonde and slim and perfect will automatically bring you happiness, and then discovering that life is full of as many disappointments as there were before.

Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways

Life, Steffi has learned, carries on around the pain, making room for it, absorbing it until it becomes part of the daily fabric, wrapping itself around you and lodging itself in your heart.