Sublime

You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.

filled with the kind of determined cheer that masked a deeper despair.

She was Melissa’s oldest, boldest friend. They had gone to the same primary school. Hazel worked in advertising. She had a wide and glamorous smile behind which was an oft-foul tongue, and long, bouncing, half-French, half-Ghanaian curls falling down her back, the most beautiful, the most envied of their schoolgirl pack, the one the boys always wen

She’d said lucky people found the work they were meant to do. Unlucky people found love.

covetous

Grace Macaulay, then: seventeen, small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of May. Her hair was black and oily, and had the hot consoling scent of an animal in summer. She disliked books, and was by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful, but not hers. She didn’t know she couldn’t sing. She was inclined to be cross.

But in the world of satisfying stories—her preferred domain—both of Olivia’s parents are so much less than they should have been.