“When they’d settled into bed last night, everything had seemed good and safe. Yeah, maybe this was worse, to have that suddenly taken away.”

“Conor wasn’t stupid. When they’d had the “little talk” the next day, he knew what his mum had done and why she had done it. But that didn’t take away from how much fun that night had been. How hard they’d laughed. How anything had seemed possible. How anything good could have happened to them right then and there and they wouldn’t have been surprised.”

“Clevedon told the dressmakers that the previous tenants (a husband and wife) had fallen into dire financial difficulties within months of opening the place. They’d absconded in the dead of night mere days ago, owing three months’ back rent. They must have borrowed or stolen a cart, because they’d taken away most of the shop’s contents and fixtures. This was a complete lie. The truth was, Varley had bribed them to move and sweetened the offer by allowing them to take with them everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“Yeah and it's over before you know itIt all goes by so fastYeah the bad nights take foreverAnd the good nights don't ever seem to last”

“...she had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess.”

“The floor had become a sea and the bed a ship, seen from a great distance. I could hear their voices calling me from far away. It lasted a minute or less. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I did not. It was an image that came to haunt me, and I have often wondered what would have happened if I had done as I was told and left the silver shoes alone. Would everything then have been alright?”