With my parents having recently put their house on the market, announcing plans to move out of Nottinghamshire altogether, I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood home and the hours my brother and I used to while away in the garden.

Sometimes, when I lingered by the window to enjoy the golden light straying along the lawn, my eyes fell upon the raw stump, settling on the emptiness where the tree had been, the tree game a distant memory.

My friend Caroline and I find ourselves caught in an unexpected snowstorm after manifesting a weekend of snow in Edinburgh — only one out of a strange list of birthday coincidences.

Caroline buys postcards to send home and writes them as we wait at the station: ‘Det had snöat (!!) och varit så stämningsfullt här uppe’, which she translates to ‘it snowed and it was feelingful’.

On what being a true friend might look like, and on readers being in friendship with writers.

Sometimes we are ineloquent. Sometimes we fail to elucidate what we mean. Sometimes we blatantly misspeak, or through fear of misspeaking do not speak at all. But when you do speak, a true friend sees through the stuttering, the awkwardness, the bluster and the confusion, and takes you as you are.