Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four oâclock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isnât broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: âget in a taxi nowâ or âI need to see you, we need to talkâ. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel â independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic. -
David Nicholls