Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened - how did you live life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a strength and courage that most people didn't have.

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

It's been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy.