As the fire dwindled, my eyes closed in half-dreaming. I was warm, and the ground beneath me was soft with mossad fallen leaves.

‘I have no objection to Patroclus as your companion.’

My body felt hollow in its relief, as if a storm had gone through.

‘Do not let what you ...

Happiness is merely a byproduct of usefulness. You don’t have to change the world or anything. Just make it a little bit better than you were born. When you do little useful things every day, it adds up to a life that is well lived. A life that mattered.

For years I allowed my body to be a liability. I was always a bigger girl and became a bigger woman.

• There was so much shame in it that I spent almost 30 years on a “diet”, a yo-yo between letting it all go and strict deprivation.

As I started to study myse...