St. Martin's Publishing Group

She was right to be worried. Frankly, to use late 1980s terminology, I was gagging for it. Like most teenagers, I was desperate to lose my virginity. However, I already had a lover that made me look pregnant but actually ensured that I would never, ever become a teenage pregnancy statistic: Food.

I’ll decide whether or not to go later

Well, I’ve felt really achy (probably angina not flu) so I wasn’t going to go to the party.

Harry, did you do that out of sympathy

Told her all about the weekend and she said Harry sounded like a wanker. I said, ‘OH MY GOD, WHY?’ She said, ‘He said he snogged you partly out of sympathy, Rae?? You don’t need some public schoolboy’s sympathy! You are one of the funniest, sweetest people I have ever known.’ I said, ‘He didn’t mean it like that,’ and she was like, ‘How did he mean it, then????’ I’m sure he didn’t. I love Mort

businessman who was present was “cruelly neglecting to tend his own mother’s grave” despite enjoying “many merry excursions with [his] lovely secretary

Shielding his eyes as though squinting into the heavens, he added that “Louise and many others are here with us tonight.”

We propose to contact our friends and ancestors on the other side,” he went on. “You cannot hide a nefarious deed from the spirits, and Mademoiselle Beatrice, a trained psychometric clairvoyant, will assist

A Magician among the Spirits, he wrote, “I associated myself with mediums, joining the rank and file and hold[ing] séances as an independent medium to fathom the truth of it all.

Spiritualism is nothing more or less than mental intoxication; intoxication of any sort when it becomes a habit is injurious to the body, but intoxication of the mind is always fatal to the mind