Everyone disliked their partners at some time or another, she knew that. But she’d spent her hours in the dark wondering whether she’d ever liked him. Would it really have been so much worse to spend those years alone? Why did there have to be someone else in the room while she was eating, watching TV, sleeping?

My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren’t they? I know they didn’t invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves.

Unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money.

What went wrong? Nothing and everything.

It takes a child to say the unsayable.

Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.

I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!