Nick Hornby

You’d think that if you’d peed with someone you ought to keep in touch with them somehow

He had been to see two films with his mum, Home Alone 2, which wasn’t as good as Home Alone 1, and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, which wasn’t as good as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and his mum had said that modern films were too commercial, and that when she was his age… something, he couldn’t remember what.

and he was sure they were unhappy, even if they had achieved some peculiar, brain-washed state that prevented them from recognizing their own unhappiness

Ms Maguire was young and nervous and she was struggling, he reckoned. This class could go either way.

‘OK, let’s put it another way. How can we tell if people are mad?’

Here it comes, he thought. Here it comes. This is it.

‘If they sing for no reason in class, miss.’

‘OK, that’s one way of telling, yes. You’d think that someone who does that would be a little potty. But leaving Marcus out of it for a moment…’

More laughter. He knew what she was doing and why, and he hated her.

was trawling through the racks while she was being served,

as an opening conversational gambit

He blushed, and the blush seemed to relax her: his embarrassment was some kind of indication of sanity, at least

When they met again she told him about her kids straight away; he wanted to throw his napkin on the floor, push the table over and run.

It had to be said that Angie’s beauty was not irrelevant to his decision to reassess his affinity with children.