If you want a girl to like you, you have to listen like a woman and love like a man.

Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.

I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling - it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake.

If you want a girl to like you, you have to listen like a woman and love like a man.

There's a gang of boys on bikes blocking the road ahead. They've got their hoods up, cigarettes shielded. The sky's a really strange colour and there's hardly anyone else about. I slow right down. "What shall I do?" "Reverse," Zoey says. "They're not going to move." I wind down the window. "Oi!" I yell "Move your arses!" They turn languid, shift lazily to the edge of the road and grin as I blow kisses at them. Zoey looks stunned, "What's got into you?" "Nothing- I just haven't learned reversing yet.

Nurses never tell you what they know. They're hired for their cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.

Maybe I’ll come back as somebody else. I’ll be the wild-haired girl Adam meets in his first week at university. ‘Hi, are you on the horticultural course as well?