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Their three-year relationship always seemed vaguely fraudulent to Ellen, as if they were just pretending to be in love but doing a really excellent job of it.
You weren’t meant to admit, even to yourself, how badly you wanted love. The man was meant to be the icing, not the cake.
‘Well, hi, Jack! How are you?’ Ellen sounded exactly as she’d been afraid she would: like a librarian at story hour.
And now he was saying, ‘And your dad wasn’t ever in the picture?’, as if he hadn’t really concentrated on the story properly, as if he’d heard her story at a dinner party many years ago and couldn’t quite remember the details. It was so disappointing. Ellen felt that nauseous anxious feeling again. What if she just wanted to be madly in love with this man?
Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Stinky’s dimple deepened. ‘Aren’t we all capable of it? I always think love is a kind of madness.’
I made myself ill on memories last night. I overdosed on them.
‘Divorced,’ said Anne blissfully, as if divorce was one of life’s sweetest pleasures.
who could ever really predict the magical combination of personality attributes and backgrounds and chemistry that caused two people to fall in love?
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Perhaps all grown-ups were just children carefully putting on their grown-up disguises each day and then acting accordingly. Perhaps it was a necessary part of being a grown-up.
‘Hindsight,’ said her father. ‘It’s always just a fraction too late.’
Over the last few months she’d learned that anything she thought she knew to be true could shift and change in an instant.
I’d forgotten that the best part of dating wasn’t the actual dating at all, but the talking about it; the analysis of potential new boyfriends with your girlfriends.
‘No, they’re soul mates,’ I said. ‘It was true love for them.’ ‘It was timing,’ she said.
