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I simply was what I was—a girl who had forged herself into a statue.
He had looked at a girl, his teenage son’s girlfriend, and seen a Shirley Temple where he should have seen poison.
I was somebody who only wanted to see the world through paintings, never a photograph.
Even now, you want permission to be a victim. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Someone to come and save you.
I am being rational, she said, lower. Being a woman with a contrary opinion does not render me hysterical.
Like the anglerfish, I had sizable teeth, but I was coming to learn I used them poorly in a crisis.
Reading took me away from myself, so I tried to be reading all the time.
I am a girl who came to the world rather late. I didn’t know how to care about someone else because I had no one to care for
In another century, Holmes, Watson had said, you would have been burned as a witch.
Girls could be so profligate with their love, as though by spreading it wide, they would induce the world to love them back. As though the world wasn’t going to take that love and beat them with it.
“Just because you know something about yourself doesn’t mean you should be forgiven for it.”
When things were going wrong, it was so easy to imagine that everyone knew, that everyone was talking about it. But nobody cared nearly as much about your life as you did.
Not long ago, I’d wanted everything from her. For her to be my confidant, my general. My best and only friend. I wanted her to be the other half of me, like we together made a coin. She the king’s head to my tails. I loved her like you would the person you’d always wanted to be, and in return I would have followed her anywhere, excused any action, fought to keep her hoisted high on her throne.
Holmes wasn’t a myth, or a king. She was a person. And to have a relationship with a person, you had to treat them like one.
Apparently the only way to rectify this is to watch loads of old Doctor Who while eating Thai peanut chicken crisps on the couch.
He told you to stop being a numpty (Scottish for “a stupid,” I had to look it up and am now getting very strange ads on my phone)
I think it’s going to be great for you to be able to focus on the kind of work you want to be doing: blowing things up. (Do they have a degree in that?)
I miss you too. I miss you like breathing. Have I already said that? I do, though. I miss you like naan pizza and builder’s tea. Like you’re the home I never knew I had.
