In my head I try and reach back, through the fence, past the smoke; I try and grab his hand and pull. Alex, come back. There is nothing to do but sink. The hours close around me, encase me completely, like a tomb.

If singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing.

I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

Finishing books - and leaving the world you've created - is always a kind of emotionally wrenching experience. I usually cry.

I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for.

You have to go forward: It's the only way. You have to go forward no matter what happens. This is the universal law.