“What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.”

“We have to find our own way to live, and to love. Don't ever let anyone else tell you how it should be for you.”

“I don't believe in the white spectre-type of ghosts you get in stories, but what if ghosts are something else? Like memories somehow caught and trapped in time, released by being in certain places where things first happened.”

“But you still need the two: the dark and the light. You can't see one without the other.”

“Because that's what you do when something terrible happens. You go over and over every little thing, looking for clues, trying to find a pattern and a way to make sense out of the muddle and hurt.”

“It's funny isn't it, how everything's changing all time. Nothing stays still.”

“That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.”