The Promise Quotes

“Bulldozers”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“She’s from a generation of mothers who seem incapable of sitting down for too long. As if it may somehow devalue them.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“Every spring when I watch the petals lost to the wind, I think of the fragility of our dreams.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“Pierre lives not far from us and the crows are stealing the vegetables from his own garden at home so he has offered in all seriousness to bring a gun and shoot them for me. I am all for the plan but am worried by his enthusiasm. Also Ella would probably call the police. Until Ned speaks to Jonathan again, I am making do by changing the hats on the scarecrows every few days. It seems for now to be tricking them.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“Finally I open my eyes to hear the real phone ringing alongside the bed. But there’s no relief because the alarm clock is blinking bad news: 3 a.m. My next emotion is panic. Has someone died?”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“I think I put my hand over her mouth . . .’ ‘Don’t say that. Don’t even think that. You wouldn’t have done that.’ They sit very still in this room full of blood and sorrow – girls whose pulses burst in their veins and boom inside their ears. Their heads. Somewhere a clock ticks. A bird calls . . . Three girls. One dead.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“I feel so sorry that I misjudged him but as we all learn much too late, guilt is a dangerous bedfellow.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“You can’t hear the world in the water. I’ve done it myself often enough. Dipped under the surface until the water fills your ears with echoes from a different place.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“Wondering again why he reacted so strangely to the picture of my two boys. And wondering most of all when I’ll find the courage to tell Sally that our new private investigator spotted it straight away. The change in Carol’s eyes.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“Three Figures: Pink and Grey. A painting of three beautiful young women in a garden – the colours all tones of grey and pink.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“I remember that when I was little, I used to play a strange game. I used to pretend that I was going to do something outrageous – anything from screaming out loud in the middle of the supermarket to jumping into a raging river. And then I would imagine all the ramifications. The shock of the shoppers. The rescue plan. It fascinated me in a dark and unhealthy way that there are seconds between one whole path in your life and a different one. A split-second choice. Do it. Or don’t.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“But my mother was a spin doctor before they were invented. All her clouds came with silver linings and I watched her eyes perform their familiar scan for something to talk up.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“I am now eating a tuna mayonnaise roll in the kitchen, surrounded by a mountain of holiday washing, talking to Sally through mouthfuls. Today I’ve shaped the washing as Kilimanjaro to remind myself of the days when I did not know that my mountains were to be made of washing – and molehills. I can’t believe that we have worn all these clothes in just four days. Come to think of it, I don’t even recognise some of these clothes.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“guess at twelve and thirteen, mothers are like thick, itchy blankets – essential to keep warm but prone to smother and irritate. Take the blanket away though? It’s a shock how cold those nights become . . .”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“I Am Watching You”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“She looks up at the mirror”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“shells . . .”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“She remembers the sand between her toes, the smell of the sea and the salt on her lips.”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“The shells . . .”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise

“They sit very still in this room full of blood and sorrow – girls whose pulses burst in their veins and boom inside their ears. Their heads. Somewhere a clock ticks. A bird calls . . .”
― Teresa Driscoll, The Promise