The Guest: ‘The tension never wavers’ (GUARDIAN)

Maybe he was good at pretending, too—she had never considered that possibility.

Lined her lashes with minute dashes of an eyeliner pencil. This labor all felt freighted, meaningful. It was like a meditation, proof of her piety, her good intentions.

Logistics were already crowding in, making her tired—this is what people like Simon got to avoid, the constant churn of anxieties somehow both punishingly urgent and punishingly boring.

Why had she never tried that before, tried just telling the truth?

Another thing she had torched.

Maybe she was the ghost she had always imagined herself to be.

the world winnowed to this immediate moment.

The dog was gone, truly gone. The sadness was instant, piercing—her eyes watered. But then, almost as quickly, the fact of the dog’s absence seemed, all at once, like just a fact, another thing that she could not change, a thing she could not help.

the untouched glass of water on the coffee table filling with sunlight.