Isla Dewar

She was sure she looked baggy-eyed, emotionally battered.

I’m this old, almost middle-aged, and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’

A difficult age, seven. It’s a time when you’re becoming aware of the world and innocence is drifting away.’

I think every age is a difficult age. That’s life. We move from difficult age to difficult age. Just when we relax because one difficult time is over – wham – we get embroiled in the next one.’

Her daughter was still a child and, right now, lived a life uncluttered by the hassle of getting on in life. She didn’t have a mortgage, didn’t have bills to pay and could go out to play when school was over. Meals she didn’t have to plan or cook were regularly provided. She got kissed and cuddled and tucked up in bed every night. She was loved, and she knew it. Life was a breeze when you were seven.

She wished she’d been smart enough to enjoy being seven when she’d been there.

His hair was too long and curled over the collar of his shirt. He frequently ran his fingers through it. He didn’t look thirty-seven.

She got kissed and cuddled and tucked up in bed every night. She was loved, and she knew it.

IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

Isla Dewar’s first book, Keeping Up with Magda, was published in 1995.

He stopped arranging his pens and looked at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Um?’

‘Separated,’ she told him. This wasn’t actually