No, I call. Come back. I'm here, he says. But I can't see. It's too bright. You can't hold back the light, Gemma. I'm here. Trust me.

It keeps her purity vacum-sealed to preserve its freshness for her future husband.

I had a friend who said, "You don't have an internal critic. You have an internal sadist."

Meraa mitra yahaan aaiye," he murmurs. I understand only a little Hindi, enough to know what he has said: Come here, my friend. I've never known a braver girl," he says.

A place to keep all your secrets

I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.