This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

There is him and there is his condition. They are two entities, forced to live in one body.

Real children fill their days, he thinks, as he takes another drag, and would-be, wished-for, imagined children fill their evenings, their weekends, their nights.

What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another.

If she tried to avoid everything that reminded her of him, then she’d have to dig a hole in the ground and live in that.

No one would believe these photographs. No one would look at them and gain even a fraction of the awe, the surreality, the—here, she thinks of the scientist, twenty feet or so from her, staring up at the sky, his head on one side—purity.

“Life comes to us but once,

I have a theory,” she says, looking far ahead, at where salt meets sky, “that marriages end not because of something you did say but because of something you didn’t.

“I will always be sad about Phoebe,” I say, with an effort to keep my voice even, “and so will Niall. But what happens is that, after a few years, you slowly realize it’s OK to be happy too.”