From A Pocket Guide to Infidelity for Girls, placed second in the Bridport Prize 2008.

1. You will be the kind of girl who likes the drummer in the band.

You will go to a gig at a pub because the man you are secretly fond of is on holiday with his wife. And because you are trying to participate more in the cultural life of the city you now live in. While there at the gig you will feel two different types of yearning simultaneously: one, that you want to lean back on a tall man, his arms around your waist; and two, that you want to know the drummer better. Already your loyalties are divided. This drummer: he's the backroom boy, the scenery shifter, the underdog. You don't find drummer jokes funny. You will see him later, packing his kit into a van when the others in the band are already at the bar, and you will love his quiet stoicism. There is so much preparatory work in being a drummer – you have to build your own instrument! – and nobody ever applauds your solos. It's too obvious to take a shine to the emoting singer or the flailing guitarist. You prefer the man at the back with a rhythmic sense of duty; a responsible man with a burden. But you will not speak to the drummer boy when the opportunity arises. Other vaguer possibilities render you temporarily chaste. Temporarily.

You are the type to harbour a mild crush on Stewart Copeland, drummer for The Police, whose intricate work on the high-hat alone makes him worthy of your affections. You will love his drumming like a tickle – a knowing tickle in your ear, one perfect tiny itchy inch ahead of the beat, when you make your way home through the back streets of Brighton the following morning listening to your Walkman, passing the street cleaners and the dog walkers. But why will you be walking home just ahead of the beat at six on a Sunday morning? Because after the gig, you will go to a party and drunkenly molest a male colleague you should have left alone and you will have to leave before he wakes. Why will you molest him? Because you will have drunk too much trying to forget about the man you are secretly fond of who is away somewhere with his wife. You will miss this secret man in a way that thrills you and tires you even as you feed it by trying to ignore it. Yes, you're the kind of girl who likes the drummer in the band.

From All of These Things Are True and Not True, published in the Bridport Prize 2009 anthology.

If you want to be a spy, it is important to know true facts. Facts are chunks of information. True means they are real and have evidence, like how I am real because I was born on my birthday in 1999 in London, UK, and have had a heart beating ever since. In my spy book, there are spies with white clothes to show they are good. The facts the white spies tell you are true. However, be warned! There are also spies with black clothes who are baddies. The black spies say lies to bamboozle you. It can be confusing, keeping track of the true fact chunks, so I have made a grid in my notebook of things that are true and things that are not true.

Have you ever made a grid? It is a way of putting fact chunks in boxes to keep them safe. Like tortoises that are sleeping for winter.

Be warned again! Sometimes there are white lies. White lies are not true but sound true; they fall on you in a gentle way like snow and you don’t see the badness inside. There are other words that are inappropriate, which is not allowed. Like when Uncle Marcus saw Mum in her new top that shows some of her bosom, he whistled the whit-woo builder noise and said: “How d’you like them apples?”

“Inappropriate, Marcus,” said Mum and swung her eyeballs in my direction like the silver clack-clack balls on Dad’s desk in his office.

Now firstly, this was not true as her bosoms are not apples. They don’t even look like apples. When she feeds milk to my baby sister, they look more like butternut squashes with raisins on the end. Secondly, it was also inappropriate, which means you can see it on the screen in your brain but you mustn’t let it slip down the mouth pipe to become word noises. I had to make a new column in my grid for this type of un-true saying. I made it with my pencil and my blue ruler.

Uncle Marcus isn’t even my uncle so that is also not true. He and my Auntie Jess are friends with my mum and dad, and they came with us to Camp Bestival. Camp Bestival is a festival and they put the words ‘best’ and ‘festival’ together to say it is the best festival. I don’t know about that. It’s the only one I have been to. I don’t know if I will be going to another one.