Алиса Пермякова

- "Did you know that Margaret Mitchell saw Melanie, not Scarlett, as the heroine of the book?" Tamara asked me, as if in passing.- "Melanie who?" I said, taken aback.We had met so that I could question her about her relationship. Tamara had read all my stories, both inside the "Love Stories" project and outside it, and it was fairly easy to talk her and her husband into becoming the models for another one.

Sadly, I hear this question with enviable regularity, in all sorts of shapes and forms. Sometimes it is that it would be nice to set up a dating agency for people who have been through therapy, for ‘non-neurotics’; sometimes it is how to protect yourself from so-called ‘arseholes’; sometimes it is complaints that there are so many of them... And when yesterday yet another client asked me in conversation how you can spot a neurotic so as not to date one, I realised the article was overdue.

Remember how Forrest Gump compared life to a box of chocolates? There it seemed to go without saying that you take one at a time and marvel or despair at each different flavour. Part of the population goes through life exactly like that. And part behaves however it likes, as long as it is not that boring and predictable.

They say the opening chords are enough to tell you how good a piece of music is, and that first impressions rarely lie. In spite of all that, Rita somehow let herself be drawn into a relationship that began with a car crash, of all things! Well — what can come of a start like that?