Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)

by Mick Herron

Half of the future is buried in the past. That was the prevailing Service culture. Hence the obsessive sifting of twice-ploughed ground, attempting to understand history before it came round again.

Maybe this was what age did, thought River. Confirmed you in your image of yourself even while it unpicked the reality, leaving you the tattered remnant of the person you’d once been.

The scary moments had won. Which sounded like a definition of ageing, to Catherine. The scary moments had won.

“We all make mistakes, River. Made a couple myself, and some have hurt other people. They’re the ones you shouldn’t get over. The ones you’re meant to learn from.

Fear lives in the guts. That’s where it makes its home. It moves in, shifts stuff around; empties a space for itself—it likes the echoes its wingbeats make. It likes the smell of its own farts.

There were ways of telling when someone was lying. The direction their eyes were pointing, for instance: left for memory, right for creation.

Is this true?

Everyone wanted a life less ordinary. And only a tiny minority ever got it, and even they probably didn’t appreciate it much.