The Break

by Marian Keyes

People went on about his ‘Irish’ eyes – I think they meant they were smiley.

Is this what life is all about? To bring us face to face with our worst fears until they no longer scare us?

I’ve been given a loud and clear message: falling apart is not an option.

we carry all our earlier selves inside our current self, like those sets of Russian dolls. If I could just reconnect with that version of me, everything would be grand.

us forty-something women are packed with sexual energy, our last hurrah before the mentalpause kicks in and we shrivel up and die.’

The thing about personal growth, I’ve discovered, is that you rarely get any choice in it. It only ever happens as a side-effect of some loss or trauma.

Missing him is exhausting, the urge to ring him almost unendurable. Just to hear his unmistakable voice – it would pierce my pain and fill the need in my chest.

And another time I made us steal a little boat from Greystones harbour and row it out a few hundred yards just so we could fuck in it.’