Big Little Lies

by Liane Moriarty

She looked around her, and saw that his studio apartment was just like an extension of the café – the same polished floorboards and rough white walls, bookshelves filled with second-hand books. The only difference was the surfboard and guitar leaning against the wall, the stack of CDs and stereo. ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Jane. ‘What?’ smiled Tom. ‘You’re into jigsaws,’ she breathed, pointing at a half-finished jigsaw on the table. She looked at the box. It was a proper hardcore (as her brother would have said) two-thousand piece jigsaw featuring a black and white photo of wartime Paris. ‘We jigsaw,’ said Jane. ‘My family. We’re kind of obsessed.’ ‘I like to always have one on the go,’ said Tom. ‘I find them sort of meditative.’ ‘Exactly,’ said Jane. ‘Tell you what,’ said Tom. ‘I’ll give you some clothes, and you can have some pumpkin soup with me and help me jigsaw.’ He pulled some tracksuit pants and a hooded sweatshirt from a chest of drawers and she went into his bathroom and put her soaked clothes, right down to her underwear, into his sink. The clothes he’d given her smelled like Tom and Blue Blues. ‘I feel like Charlie Chaplin,’ she said, with the sleeves hanging below her wrists as she pulled up the waist of the tracksuit pants. ‘Here,’ said Tom, and he neatly folded up the sleeves of the shirt above her wrists. Jane submitted like a child. She felt unaccountably happy. Cherished. She sat down at the table and Tom brought them over bowls of pumpkin soup swirled wi...

This just made me feel all warm and fuzzy. (=