Katie Whittaker. When we were at school, I told her I knew Take That, and I didn’t.

As a teenager I told my father, “You led us into the camp like sheep to slaughter.” I knew I had hurt him, this man that I loved so much. That’s haunted me all my life.

My younger self, because I was very, very tough on myself.

Everyone I ever met in 2007, because I was definitely about two hours late.

I’m walking down a street in New York, the sun is shining, I’m on my way to see friends who are chosen family—and I’ve just written a couple of pages that I like.

Being a salesgirl in a baby shop where the others said things like, “He’s Jewish, but she’s American.” Also, after college, being a waitress in London, and trying to make change in the old money of shillings and pence.

First a horse rancher, then a dancer.

I haven’t done it yet.

Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.

Feeling you want someone else’s welfare as much and sometimes more than your own.