I Owe You One: The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller

I used to yearn so hard for the sunshine of Jake’s approval. But now I’m feeling a different kind of glow. Conviction that we’re doing the right thing.

Poor legs. I send them a quick message, saying, Do this for me and we’ll have a hot bath later.

Thank God. Saved from a six-hour anecdote about a trout.

Whenever Mum smiles, lines appear all over her face. They stretch like sunrays from her eyes, they score her cheeks and mark out her forehead in deep creases.

has decided to bring up her children as Danish–French hybrids. Apparently then they’ll be super-relaxed, stylish and eat their vegetables. (I said once, ‘Why not bring them up British?’ and she stared at me and said ‘

For about the hundredth time I wonder if we could send Greg on a course. A course on Not Being Greg.

‘How was he rubbish?’ I can’t help asking.

shout at you and you don’t seem to care.’ ‘I guess I think about why I’m speaking,’ says Seb thoughtfully. ‘Who I’m speaking for. Who I represent. I’m speaking for people who don’t have a voice, and that inspires me. That powers me along.’

I try to focus on a beach, but the only beach I can visualize is dry and scorching and kind of dystopian-looking, with blinding white sand and harsh cliffs and a vulture trying to peck bits out of my eyes while it screeches in my ear.