More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
In her experience, most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.
Sanjay’s compartments all appeared to be linked together. He couldn’t stop one thing leaking into the next.
Did all that shock and grief seep into the soft furnishings?
The rules that always seemed to change just as soon as you had them all figured out.
It was wound around his organs like a giant parasite that couldn’t be removed without killing its host.
They never could agree on who took the lead when they were dancing.
He knew that under all that fake porcelain, her actual teeth had been filed into tiny sharp daggers. There was a metaphor there somewhere.
David looked like a man better acquainted with a cardigan and comfortable slippers than with passion or adventure.
hes just like me fr
Sometimes fate just shows you the way to go and you have no option but to follow.
“Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?
“Have you ever had the feeling that your whole life is like a Jenga tower, and if one more piece is removed the whole thing is just going to come crashing down?” he asked her.
Martha tried to imagine Iona ever becoming a target and failed. That woman was bulletproof.
What would Attenborough say? The injured lone wolf needs to get back to the safety of his pack.
Silent tears, pouring down her cheeks, no doubt taking her carefully applied war paint with them.
She’d convinced herself that the message had been written by someone who was jealous of her, but perhaps it was just someone being honest, voicing what everyone was thinking.
Ever since Mum had died, they’d had an unwritten pact to make every interaction as relentlessly cheerful as possible, as a counterbalance to their individual grief.
She’d miss moments like this if she stopped commuting. All those passing, but heartwarming, interactions with the myriad of people who made up her day. The barista at the station coffee shop, the office doorman, the Big Issue seller she chatted to every morning. They all made her feel connected to the world around her, part of something bigger.
“Who’d have thought I’d end up basing my life choices on an eccentric lesbian? But it seems to work.”
She’d loved the idea of long lie-ins, being able to read novels, travel, indulge herself.
“They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”
But how could she fight now? What enemy was she even fighting? Mother Nature? The march of time itself? Her own treacherous, deteriorating body?
She’d always believed that adults knew all the answers, and that only she was trying to navigate through life without the requisite instruction manual. But it was becoming increasingly obvious that they were often as lost as she was.
David was carrying a backpack, which was the sartorial antithesis of Iona’s magic handbag and must have once belonged to his daughter, since it had a sticker on it saying I HEART THE BACKSTREET BOYS and a picture of some guys looking like One Direction, but with terrible haircuts.
She really hoped he wasn’t going to try to touch her. He didn’t, making her rather wish that he would.
We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.
He felt as if he’d been flying happily toward his rose-tinted future, without realizing that there was an impassable sheet of hermetically sealed glass in front of him.
Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.
Emmie’s left hand felt empty without the ring on it. She’d mentioned this to Iona, who’d said, It’s not empty, dear heart, it’s LIGHT. That ring was weighing you down!
She couldn’t bear the idea of terminally embarrassing herself in front of them, too. Where would she be able to escape to then?
Sanjay had studied enough anatomy to know that a heart doesn’t actually break. But if it was just an expression, then why did it hurt so much?
According to all the usual key indicators, Piers’s life had deteriorated significantly. Yet he was happier than he’d ever been.
“I’ll tell him that the line between best platonic friends and lovers is wafer-thin. Have you watched When Harry Met Sally?”
“The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,” said Iona. “Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.”
She’d been so busy looking over her shoulder at her lost life that she’d not seen what was right in front of her.
“We’re the whole damn cake,” said Bea. “The whole damn cake,” echoed Iona.
