No one has the ability to laugh at their misfortunes like the women of the East End.

And I thought, I am in love. For the first time I am in love. And loved. Someone loves me. And I love them. And within me things clicked and whirled like the insides of some gigantic clock, cog against wheel, spring against spiral, tick against tock, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I had shown someone what I really was. I had shown someone my truth, my secret. Out there, beyond the walls of the Castle, there was a boy who had seen inside my chrysalis. And I would never be safe again.

Darwin got it all wrong, you see. Fitness has nothing to do with it. It's survival of the sickest. That's all.

I heard a baby cry. And this blood-splattered thing was put in my arms. My child. And, at that moment, it was like a gigantic plug appeared and - POW! - I was plugged into humanity in a way I'd never been before. Never could be. I was part of all mothers and all births from the beginning of time. I was a woman in a mud hut in Africa, in an igloo in the Arctic, a wigwam in America, a cave, a skyscraper, a spaceship. I was part of a flow and that flow was blood -

I love you so much I could burst into flames.