“I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.”

“Mum handed me back my engagement ring and I slipped it on. I found the weight of it around my finger comforting, as it Todd was holding my hand.”

“...death does leave a daunting array of practical tasks: all those possessions that you were forced to leave behind had to be sorted and packed and redistributed in the living world.”

“And I felt closer to you. Because you knew me so much better than I'd realized - and still loved me.”

“Mums answer is so unexpected and I am a litte stunned, actually. I wonder whether, had I known the reason for my name as a child, I would have tried to live up to it. Instead of being a failed Arabella, I might have become a Shakespearean plucky Beatrice.”

“Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world, because your were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthod -- was that to replaced by nothing? The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody's sister now.”

“I threw everything we had together - the strong roots and stems and leaves and beautiful soft blossoms of sisterhood - into the earth with you. And I was left standing on the edge, so diminished by the loss that I thought I could no longer be there.”