Meg Rosoff

I was constantly falling in love with absolutely the wrong people and, you know, having bizarre relationships.

I mean, the great relationship I had as a teenager was with a boy who's, you know, after eight years of, you know, a sort of on again, off again, I never had his phone number.

I mean, he would show up in the summer in his wonderful old car.

We'd go off to the beach and we'd

We'd swim under the stars.

It was the most romantic thing in the world.

And then I wouldn't hear from him for, you know, a month, a year, a week.

I mean, who knew?

And this kept going on.

And I remember him showing up in a beautifully tailored suit and a cashmere coat when I lived and worked in New York City.

So it went on for such a long time.

And it wasn't exactly toxic, but it sure as heck was weird.

Yes, exactly.

One of my favourite scenes in the book is when Mattie, who is one of the many people in the book who I'm deeply in love with,

realizes that he's sort of pulling away from her and she starts trying on clothes and shoes and fixing her hair.

And there's a line in the book, it says, as if she could get the right shoes, that would convince Kit Garden that he still loved her.

And I remember that so distinctly, that feeling that if you could only

somehow get the formula that if you could be just a slightly different person, that the person you loved would throw himself at your feet and say, you are the one.

And of course, we all know now it's not true.

And when I was working in advertising many, many years ago, when I was first married in England, there were all these girls who would come in looking haggard with kind of great black circles under their eyes.