“She loved airports. She loved the smell, she loved the noise, and she loved the whole atmosphere as people walked around happily tugging their luggage, looking forward to going on their holidays or heading back home. She loved to see people arriving and being greeted with a big cheer by their families and she loved to watch them all giving each other emotional hugs. It was a perfect place for people-spotting. The airport always gave her a feeling of anticipation in the pit of her stomach as though she were about to do something special and amazing. Queuing at the boarding gate, she felt like she was waiting to go on a roller coaster ride at a theme park, like an excited little child.”

“I don't know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”

“So don’t go, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. Not when he looked so happy, so excited about what his future might hold. That was the way normal people felt when they were trying to move up, when they’d found someone to love who loved them back. Not the way Chess felt, like she was trying to stem an arterial bleed with her fingertip.”

“She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened. Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her. But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.”

“She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centered love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love.”

“Traffic is light as she leaves Mowbray. So is her heart. Light. Soon. Soon, she will be home. Strange how she was able to bear it -- bear being away. Until now. With a day to go, it has suddenly become unbearable. Since that party on Saturday night. Smashing send-off these lovely people gave her. Really smashing. So, why is she feeling so blue? Ah, well, she thinks to herself, I've always had a problem, saying goodbye.She hardly has a moment to breathe through the day. So busy. Her very last day at this place she has called home these ten months past. Here at the university too, many people want to talk about her trip back home. If only they knew. If only they knew. Excited as she is about the prospect of seeing her family, of going home, seeing her friends, with all that ... still, saying goodbye is not easy. Never has been for her. That is what she's doing now. How she wishes everybody would just forget she was going back home. But no. People insist on saying goodbye, on giving her party after party. Therefore, she is forced to take leave of her friends, to acknowledge the pain of parting. Bitter sweet. How she wishes she were home already. But, of course, before that can happen, she has to say goodbye to all these dear, dear friends, these people of whom she has grown so fond. But perhaps she will come back. Of course, she will come back, one day. A not too far-away day too, that's for sure.Yes, I can see how torn she must have felt. Excited and grieving. Happy and sad. At one and the same time. For the same, the very same, reason.”