‘It doesn’t feel real – Switzerland, I mean. Like a place in a snow globe.

‘Do people actually come from here,’ he said, ‘or was it just invented for strangers?’

‘Some people live to be ninety,’ Iona said, ‘but they never know such things. It’s no comfort right now, but he really lived.’

‘Men have a way of writing themselves into each other’s experience and placing it away from the women they love.’

That neutral country glinted under the sun, the blue roads like veins carrying poor blood to the heart.

The air appeared to carry the spirit of what he was saying, and I breathed it, too, and when Anna and Iona came down it felt like our first evening on a new island.

‘Go gently with people’s pain. It’s the same as yours.’

Hasn’t he always been famous for scoffing in the face of adversity?

Her tone was balanced between pity and anger.