Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

by Clare Pooley

Men had such fragile egos. She supposed she should take as a compliment the fact that he was convinced everyone wanted to sleep with her.

Sanjay had no idea what had become of his childhood tormentors, but he liked to invent various miserable outcomes for them.

was? Sanjay’s entire annual salary after tax wouldn’t pay for the ridiculously showy watch on Piers’s wrist. Sanjay stopped himself. That sort of thinking could drive you mad with envy.

And if adults—proper, educated, married, and rich adults like Piers—could melt down like that, then what hope did she have? What hope did any of them have?

Toby was a huge fan of remote working. The commute, he said, was a relic from the pre-internet era. An unnecessary waste of time, energy, and money, as well as being a driver of climate change and pollution.

Maybe having children just postponed, then accentuated, the sense of emptiness and worthlessness.

“No woman is anyone’s ‘other half.’ We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.

When the thing you’ve feared for so long actually happens, you have nothing left to be scared of anymore.

Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.

“We women spend the majority of our lives as slaves to our pesky hormones.

Being a storyteller is the best job in the world, but it can be hard and very lonely. Like many authors (especially women!), I suffer from terrible imposter syndrome, and often doubt my own talent. This is where friendships with other writers are so important.