Sublime

It was tempting to confine oneself to what one could cope with. And one couldn’t cope with love. (In her experience, at any rate, it had always got out of hand.) But, after all, it was the only state in which one could consider oneself normal; which engaged all one’s capacities, rather than just those developed by necessity—or shipwreck. One never

Belonging nowhere was almost like belonging everywhere.

‘You’re on another planet!’ Mrs Baker would cry as she turned off the gas or saved the bath from overflowing. ‘God only knows what you did before I came.’ ‘Well,’ Astrid would say, ‘I had Charlie, and before Charlie I lived in squalor.’

Lucy wonders now if she’s spent her entire life distracting herself from the reality that there were too many gaps in the story of her family. A hollowness where the truth ought to be.

The baby looked drowsy now, which pleased Julia. That meant her child wasn’t hooked up to her mother’s adrenal system. If she was, Alice would be crying right now. Julia wanted to cry.

sybarite.

In Tracey’s home, disappointment in the man was ancient history: they had never really had any hope in him, for he had almost never been at home.

Other people’s parents are often a delight.