Madonna in a Fur Coat (Penguin Modern Classics)

I could no longer love, or risk any form of intimacy, for I had been deceived by the one person I’d trusted and believed absolutely. After that, how could I trust anyone again?

never learned — or wanted to learn — how to make boys like me. I never blushed when I was around them or fished for compliments.

He seemed so confident, so pleased with himself.

The more I needed my friends, the more I longed to run away.

And here was the strangest thing: the more my situation worsened, the less I could be sure of surviving from one day to the next, the greater my shame and my reluctance to ask for help.

Send a hero into a dragon’s den, and his task is clear. It is a hero of another order who can summon up the courage to lower himself into a well of which we have no knowledge.

lingered in the doorway, furtively watching me

homely but amiable.

Half-heartedly, I said, ‘I’m unemployed!’

sought him out after losing my job