3. "And from a very tiny, underused part of my brain - probably located at the base of my medulla oblongata near where my subconscious dwells - comes the thought: He's here to see you."
4. "Hmmm ... he's soft and hard at once, like steel encased in velvet, and surprisingly tasty."
5. "His lips part, like he's taking a sharp intake of breath, and he blinks. For a fraction of a second, he looks lost somehow, and the Earth shifts slightly on its axis, the tectonic plates sliding into a new position."
6. "I feel the colour in my cheeks rising again. I must be the colour of the Communist Manifesto."
7. "He's said such loving things today ... But how long will he want to do this without wanting to beat the crap out of me."
No choice in war
In The Bat, by Jo Nesbo, a character wondered why New Zealanders participated in major wars in the 20th century. Ramona writes: "My uncle was a quiet 19-year-old farmer, helping his widowed mother bring up his younger siblings in a one-room cottage. He didn't want to go to war and refused. He wasn't a coward but had a huge sense of duty to his recently widowed mother and his family. He hid in the dense bush but they dragged him away to Auckland to be conscripted. He didn't have a choice. He tried to run away again but they put him on a boat to Italy. He sent his mother a compact mirror as a gift, and it arrived broken. As a Maori woman, her grief when she received the cracked compact was absolute; the telegram from the war office some time later merely confirmed her boy was dead and going to be buried on Italian soil."
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