How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen. How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

And now he's down this for me. He's made me famous. He's put my name on the world.

Parents don't know their children at all. No one knows anyone, in fact.

I want you to be with me in the dark. To hold me. To keep loving me. To help me when I get scared. To come right to the edge and see what's there.

It's as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

She needed food. Diets didn't count in a crisis.

Was this love? Because it hurt. It was like a bit of glass stuck somewhere important--his heart or his head, and it was throbbing.