She was the most beautiful thing you ever saw. She was radiant. And she was wearing this necklace... When you see the necklace in the painting, it all makes sense. He loved her. Even if she lived to one hundred and five without ever getting an answer.

I think a lot of people still fantasise about that first love and what might happen if they rekindled the relationship.

It really is the year 2007. Which means I must be...

Oh my God. I'm twenty-eight.

I'm old.

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits.

The thing with giving up is you never know. You never know whether you could have done the job. And I'm sick of not knowing about my life.

When I wrote my first book, 'The Tennis Party', my overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel. I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not just writing about my life, I'm a real author.'