“Maybe attraction was aligned in heaven before our birth because there was no other way to explain my feelings. There were millions of boys on the earth. Why did it feel so strong?”

“I could feel their grief as if it were a beast holding us down.”

“If there was some way of knowing which boys were likely to turn out to be decent men, boys that could love us back as passionately as we felt we could love them, then we could banish the likelihood of divorce and unhappiness to a statistically unlikely outcome.”

“Don't you find it strange that your mother would leave you?' Becky said. 'I can't imagine my other leaving me.'I'd never thought of it like that before. 'I don't think she knew what else to do.”

“But sometimes I wanted to feel like a child, to know that he would stand in front of me while waves crashed towards us or arrows come at us.”

“Standing there, that day, I felt like Sally was being torn from my skin and there was no way I could ever fly free, without her right beside me.”

“I knew I'd never have another moment like this. Just a single place in time where everything had come together to breathe in harmony. Time slowed and I had gathered all her restless strands in my hands; where I had come from, where I was and where I was going was one long thread as I emerged to make my way into the world.”