Willa’s big blue eyes, Willa’s dimpled-cheeked smile. Tiffin’s shaggy blond mane, Tiffin’s cheeky grin. Kit’s yells of excitement, Kit’s glow of pride. Maya’s face, Maya’s kisses, Maya’s love. Maya, Maya, Maya . . .

You cannot undo the past; you can only learn to live with it, find some way of making peace with it, and move on.

He shakes his head with a slow smile. You'd better be right. If the phone rings, I'm unpluggining it, I swear to God-“ You'd do that to your five-year-old sister?“ I gasp in mock outrage. For one whole night alone? Jesus, Maya, I'd sell her to the gypsies!

At the age of five she has already come to terms with one of the life's harshest lessons: that the world isn't fair.

But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish, such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky - beautiful, unreachable and completely transistent.

Before there was anything, there was Lochan.

She can't just be a face, a body; there has to be more than that, some kind of connection. And I can't connect, don't want to connect, with anyone.