Nell was not one for friends and had never hidden her distaste for most other humans, their neurotic compulsion for the acquisition of allies.

I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but little girls usually fared much better.

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it.

In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.

To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.

. . . companions were to be valued, wherever one found them.