Claire Nicholls

I never agreed to that.

My father eventually won the argument by yanking the suitcase from her hand, breathing heavily and retreating to pack.

A border had been erected between us.

We were all strangers to each other now.

I guess so.

I mean, I think that the style in which I write, which is kind of darkly humorous or, you know, dark comedy, blackly funny, whatever you, however you want to describe it, is just the kind of default style.

style that I have.

It's sort of like asking someone to describe their odour.

It's very hard.

This is the way it sort of comes out.

And I guess it's kind of the way I see the world.

Well, I don't know if being miserable is funny, but I think if you can't find the humour in difficult circumstances, then the misery will just be compounded.

You know, it's probably basically I've probably made a living out of my self-defence mechanism.

Yeah, good question.

I wanted to write about, there's a lot about loneliness in this book, and I wanted to write about that.

I also had written three books about fear.

My first book was about the fear of death.

The second one was about the fear of suffering.

And the third book was about sort of the fear of the opinions of other people.

And