*Amelia* 

"If there was one thing I have never been good at, it was speaking in public. I might seem very confident while having a one-to-one discussion, but the very moment I'm standing in front of a crowd, that confidence immediately vanishes. So in order not to humiliate myself whenever I have a speech in public, I used to revise the speech over and over again till I memorised it; by so doing, when I got to the stage, I would simply read out what I had memorised without making eye contact with anyone.

When Henry finished speaking and invited me over to the stage, I had wanted to refuse...