First One Missing Quotes

“Double-clicking on his inbox, Jason noted that one of the three messages was from Suzy, aka ButterfliesInMyTummy, and his mood lifted. It was the fourth or fifth message they’d exchanged, and they were just starting to move beyond the tedious small-talk stage. He skimmed through the message, growing increasingly impatient. Suzy favoured those little face icons. The whole page was littered with them – smiley faces, sad faces, surprised faces, embarrassed faces. Why couldn’t she just use words like everyone else? She also put five or six exclamation marks after a sentence, or added extra vowels to words, so everything was sooooooooo much fun or soooooooooo boring. It wound Jason up when people couldn’t write properly. He wasn’t asking for brain of Britain, but he liked a woman to be able to write a sentence that started with a capital letter and ended with a full stop and at least made an attempt at the Queen’s English. At least it wasn’t in text speak. He refused to answer the messages that spelled thanks ‘tnx’. Britain didn’t go through two World Wars so that the English language could be mutilated beyond recognition.”
― Tammy Cohen, First One Missing

“There was something about this girl’s body language, the way she kept darting a look at Leanne, then turning her eyes quickly away, that made her think maybe she was telling the truth. In Leanne’s experience, if people were lying, they tended either to look away the whole time or to fix you with intense eye contact as if daring you to disbelieve them.”
― Tammy Cohen, First One Missing

“Suddenly Guy appeared in the doorway. Emma was surprised to see he had his jacket on, a black leather biker-style one he wore with the self-consciousness of a girl in her first pre-teen bra.”
― Tammy Cohen, First One Missing

“Lost in her litany of thoughts, Emma was only vaguely aware of the alarm sounding.

‘Can you turn that fucking thing off?’ said Guy’s back. He emphasized the ‘fucking’, like a child self-consciously trying out swearing for the first time. Funny how his back seemed to have taken on a personality all of its own now Emma saw it so often. It was intractable, solid, unyielding – she imagined it to be like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, all brooding muscle and tense resistance. Unlike Guy himself whose presence settled around the house like fine mist, everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”
― Tammy Cohen, First One Missing