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.

I've never seen anyone sleep with their head hanging off the back of a wooden chair before - was the couch not comfortable enough for you?

I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean - because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we're all the same.

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!

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.

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.

If I move, if I speak, if I so much as blink, I'm going to lose this battle.