Oh Danny, you don't even know how often I think about this.

If I'd followed the trajectory I was on when I was eleven? Youngest girl in a house full of boys (one missing sister), Las Vegas, not rich, over-excited, hungry for any scrap of attention I got, total belief in a happy ending. If the thing happened that forced me to London, who would I be?

Or twelve and just in London, totally repressing all parental betrayal as hard as I possibly could by being as bright and sunny as possible. I started keeping a journal back then Danny and I am not the same person. Not at all. If I'd never met the Sisterhood, who would I be?

Or thirteen when I met the Sisterhood and thought I had found people who got me, thought I found people who I could do important things with, exciting, clever, vital girls. If Gloria hadn't... who would I be then?

We are the bits left over after the world has had its way with us. I don't think there's any way we can be anything else. And we can speculate on the other versions of us, the ones that didn't survive life in the same way we survived it, but we can never ever be them, so they are not real, not at all.

You can speculate about a Danny who doesn't care about people as much as you care, but he isn't real. He's had an easier life than you, probably, but that life never existed. He doesn't exist.

There's only you, as you are, right now. Empathy, kindness and messed up habits of survival. That's what real.

At least, that's how I see it. That's what makes sense to me, when ideas are rolling around in my head, after dark.