“She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.”

“Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.”

“If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.”

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”

“She had had affairs over the years ... but she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and it was only when she realized that it was too late, that it could never be, that she understood what it was that she had lost. Pamela's life would go on after she was dead, her descendants spreading through the world like the waters of a delta, but when Ursula died she would simply end. A stream that ran dry.”

“He was officially a lunatic, she decided. Strangely, that didn't make him less attractive.”

“What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened - how did you live life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a strength and courage that most people didn't have.”