The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)

by Richard Osman

What is it about Christmas? Everything that’s wrong seems worse, and everything that’s right seems better.

The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal. But, however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fiber starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.

Love always finds a language. Elizabeth hasn’t come to ask me for help or advice, and I understand that completely. I know from experience that grief rides alone.

We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.”

You understand that these people are still alive? Everyone who dies is alive. We call people ‘dead’ because we need a word for it, but ‘dead’ just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.”

“Grief doesn’t need an answer, any more than love does,” says Elizabeth. “It isn’t a question.”

Days of death are days when we weigh our relationship with love in our bare hands. Days when we remember what has gone, and fear what is to come. The joy love brings, and the price we pay. When we give thanks but also pray for mercy.

Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils will always spring up, like daffodils in springtime.

The life she had with Stephen will always mean more to her than the life she will now have going forward. She will spend more time there, in that past, she knows that. And, as the world races forward, she will fall further and further back. There comes a point when you look at your photograph albums more often than you watch the news. When you opt out of time, and let it carry on doing its thing while you get on with yours. You simply stop dancing to the beat of the drum.

our memories are no less real than whatever moment in which we happen to be living.