After You (Me Before You, #2)

by Jojo Moyes

It’s good for the soul, building a house.’

‘He moans about going, but he secretly loves it.’

‘Nobody ever feels they’re doing well with teenagers,’ he said. ‘I think that’s kind of the point of them.’

You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun.’

‘You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.’

Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning.