‘Don’t patronise me!’ I shouted at Morgan, on one of the occasions when I couldn’t avoid visiting my father – it was his birthday, and I did not feel like celebrating with him. I stormed from the house and found myself in a park an hour later, crying my eyes out, my head against the rough bark of a tree. ‘You don’t know what I’m really like!’ I yelled at my mother, before taking myself off to the bookshop one Saturday. I cried angrily in the back room of the shop for a while and then went out to serve with a stony face. Customers were such idiots! They insisted on buying crap like vampire books instead of brilliant stuff like Crime and Punishment. ‘Has this anything to recommend it?’ I wondered aloud, tossing one such book into a paper bag and throwing in the obligatory promotional bookmark. ‘Anna, I’m giving you a warning,’ said the manager, when the customer had gone.
