I am a desperate romantic. I love the idea of random collisions of the heart.

I realised how fatalistic this sounded. Like it was the beginning of the end. The start of the last chapter.

But if it is love, real love, then I want them to find each other. Because I believe that love is an overwhelming, all-consuming force, and when it’s genuine you can’t really ignore it. No matter how long it takes. It knocks down your door by force. It keeps you awake at night. It plagues your thoughts and burn your soul. If it is love, they won’t need me at all. By telling my daughter that the man of her dreams loves her too, would I not be getting in the way? Meddling with fate?

I’m cautious with the love word because I really know what it means. I’ve been there, done that and I know what the implications are. I also know that people say they love people when they don’t, and it often results in tears and avoidance of bars, supermarkets, even whole towns in extreme cases.

That was the awakening, really; it dawned on me that this wasn't really very fair on anyone. On her. On me. On Sienna. But I wasn't willing to change anything, either. I was fiercely protective of my friendship with Sienna. I had fought for it, against my true feelings, for years. I had battled so hard to suppress my feelings, and succeeded. I could never let her go.

You know the type - the ones who steal your heart and leave you floundering helplessly without it for half a decade, shoving other things into the gap where it used to be, but finding that they don't bloody fit

Because I believe that love is an overwhelming, all-consuming force, and when its genuine you can't really ignore it. No matter how long it takes. It knocks down your door by force. It keeps you awake at night. It plagues your thoughts and burns your soul.

It must be difficult loving someone that much and having to pack it away into a little box and pretend it isn't there'That was a very good way of describing it. A little box. Packed full of love. Love that I had never really been able to express, so it was banging away at the sides and screaming to be let out. 'Yes it has been. And really, it's a little box I carry everywhere with me, because I guess the love never properly goes away.

She looked different. Oh yes, that was it - I didn't love her anymore. People do look different when you fall out of love with them.

I like to pick things apart, analyse them and put them back in a better order than they had been in before