“I literally felt gutted, as if someone had hollowed me out, removed my core. Patients in the final stage of dementia revert to an almost neonatal state, their brains so atrophied they can only breathe and digest, suck and pout. That was how I felt. I continued to function, but only at the most basic level, my existence little more than a collection of primitive reflexes.”

“Tired, yes, but it was more than that. Watching everything unfold had lurched me from anger to disgust and finally sorrow, had reminded me that love is fleeting and precious and should never be taken for granted. All of a sudden I felt the need to seize it with both hands, to assure myself that the same pain wouldn’t be mine.”

“For a second I felt content, an emotion so unfamiliar it took me a moment to identify it.”

“I was out of control, manic, less myself than I’d ever been. Like Eve must have felt after the fall, I reflected as I drove away. Leaving Eden for a land unknown.”

“I’m not proud of any of this, truly I’m not. Looking back I can’t believe how I acted, how each deceit flowed so seamlessly from another. My only excuse is that I was addicted, and like any addict all I could think about was my next hit. Hurting Cary didn’t seem of any consequence, neglecting Sarah or my work was unimportant. All that mattered was Luke and the singing in my veins whenever we were together.”

“I had learnt from my work: that all pain is erased in the passage of time. Not just by, but in. In ten decades hence it would be as if nothing had ever happened. There would be no relics, no scars. No jug to piece together, no bone fragments to date. Emotions fade and leave no trace. Only the inanimate remains.”

“Oh, I already loved my husband, of course, but this was different. That had been a decision; this was out of my control, an impulse as difficult to resist as gravity. Mad love, crazy love, drop, sink, stumble. The kind of love where every little thing is a sign, a portent: the song on the radio, his Christian name staring up at you from a magazine you’re flicking through, your horoscope in the paper. Normally I don’t even believe in horoscopes, for God’s sake. Love without holes or patches or compromises, soft as an easy chair, a many splendoured thing.”