“His love for her was so deeply woven with resentment that he could not untangle the two.”

“Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.”

“When he reached the desk he handed Caroline a photograph in a dark blue cardboard frame. It was a portrait, black and white, faintly tinted. The woman looking out wore a pale peach sweater. Her hair was gently waved, her eyes a deep shade of blue. Rupert Dean's wife, Emelda, dead now for twenty years. "She was te love of my life," he announced to Caroline, his voice so loud that people looked up.”

“his discomfort seemed to soften her, for when he met her eyes again, they were kind.”

“So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.”

“She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.”

“...so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.”