Self-reliance. That was the keyword, the one thing that could pull you through any crisis fate chose to hurl at you. To be yourself. Independent. Not witless. Still able to make my own decisions and plot the course of what remains of my life. I do not need my children. Knowing their faults, recognizing their shortcomings, I love them all, but I do

And did so, forgetting Olivia, forgetting the time. She often did this. Time had lost its importance. That was one of the good things about getting old: you weren’t perpetually in a hurry. All her life, Penelope had looked after other people, but now she had no one to think about but herself. There was time to stop and look, and, looking, to rememb

As it is, she never stops. Cooks and gardens and entertains and reads everything she can lay her hands on, and listens to music, and rings people up and has long, satisfying conversations. Sometimes she takes herself off abroad to stay with old friends. France, usually.

“They seem nice fellers.” The General’s eye, hostly, strayed. “I’m going to rescue Mellaby. He’s had ten minutes of undiluted Trubshot, and that’s enough for any man.”

It was hard to find the words, because all at once everything was alien and new; they were husband and wife, and neither knew what was expected of them.

For some time Richard neither sought her out nor claimed her, but this did not matter, for it simply extended the anticipation of finally finding herself at his side and being with him again. As though performing some ritual dance, they circled, never within earshot; smiling into other faces, listening to other conversations.

It was said with no prevarication, the way she had always said things to her mother, honestly, with no devious beatings about the bush. It

He stooped to kiss her. His height was one of her pleasures, because it made her feel vulnerable and helpless.

When I sold Oakley Street, I had plans to return to Cornwall. To buy a little granite cottage with a palm tree in the garden. But my children intervened and talked me out of it and finally my son-in-law found Podmore’s Thatch, and so, after all, I shall spend the twilight of my years in Gloucestershire, and not within sight and sound of the sea.”