About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love.

A kiss is the prize?’ he asked sadly. ‘Even more than giving me the rest of you? It should be the other way round, Princess. In the real world, it's called courting. You let a lad kiss you and then you offer him more.’ ‘Let me tell you something, Olivier,’ she said with tears of sorrow in her eyes, ‘this is my real world.

It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door. He turns around. “What?” Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up. “The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.

I would pick them when they bloomed. And when she called me home for supper, I'd place them in her hair and the contrast would take my breath away.

God knows what possessed me, but having that science book in my hand propelled me to immediate action. So I hit her with it.

Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

You blame me for this, don't you?" he says. "I don't need to. You're doing a better job.