Into the Water

by Paula Hawkins

The things I want to remember I can’t, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.

I said your name softly, as if to conjure you up, like a devil.

The water, the water, the water—no way to get away from it in this town.

She knew when she listened to the grief counsellors that they were talking nonsense and she would never, ever have another good day for the rest of her life,

The guilt felt like a stone in Louise’s throat; she kept expecting it to choke her, but it didn’t, it wouldn’t, and so she had to go on breathing—breathing and remembering.

I’d never been drunk before, I didn’t realize how quickly the twist comes, the slide from elation to despair, from up to down.

But I’d been biting and biting and biting for months now, and if I didn’t stop, I was going to bite clean through. I was going to choke on it.

I thought how odd it was that parents believe they know their children, understand their children. Do they not remember what it was like to be eighteen, or fifteen, or twelve?

didn’t care that he’d spent all his life telling himself he did nothing wrong; that’s what men like him do.