“Ben told me that Tom had just spoken on the mobile to Alice and according to Tom she didn’t say anything about falling over at the gym and she sounded “Just like Mum except maybe ten to fifteen percent grumpier than usual.” I think he’s learning percentages at school right now.”

“It’s true I’ve never been pregnant, but I know it’s like to lose the possibility of a baby. So of course I sympathize with Elizabeth, Phil! Deeply! My heart breaks for her. I’ve cried and cried for her each time she’s lost another baby.It’s just that sometimes I want to say to her, “Darling, maybe you don’t get to be a mother, but you still get to be a wife.”

“Alice would give anything, anything at all, to be lying in bed with Nick, waiting for a cup of tea. Maybe he got sick of making her cups of tea? Was that it? Had she taken him for granted? Who did she think she was, some sort of princess, lying in bed waiting for cups of tea to be delivered.”

“And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much.”

“It seemed truly frightening that it was only by sheer chance that she had met Nick. It could so easily not have happened and then she would have had a shadowy, half-alive existence, like some sort of woodland creature who never sees sunlight, never even knowing how much she could love and how much she could be loved. Elisabeth once said — very definitely and severely — that the right man didn't complete you, you have to find happiness yourself, and Alice nodded agreeably, while thinking to herself, 'Oh, but yes he does.”

“He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light.”

“Finally she stopped resisting and called a truce. Young Alice was allowed to stay as long as she didn't eat too much chocolate.”