Joanne Harris

Friendship is overrated. Who needs friends when you can have the certitudes of hostility? You know where you stand with an enemy. You know he won’t betray you. It’s the ones who claim to be your friends that you need to beware of.

I tried a last, miserable tactic. ‘Please. I love you, Sig,’ I said.

That’s how pitiful I was. That’s how sorry I was for myself. That’s how wretchedly low I’d sunk – using the L-word to my wife . . .