I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was afraid of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of his fears. Will Traynor’s life had been so far beyond the experiences of mine. Who was I to tell him how he should want to live it?
Nobody ever feels they’re doing well with teenagers, he said. I think that’s kind of the point of them.
I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.
Spring arrived overnight, as if winter, like some unwanted guest, had abruptly shrugged its way into its coat and vanished, without saying good-bye.
And I cannot for the life of me see how you can be content to live this tiny life. This life that will take place almost entirely within a five-mile radius and contain nobody who will ever surprise you or push you or show you things that will leave your head spinning and unable to sleep at night.
I told myself firmly that it was just a feeling, the echo of an anxiety. I could overcome it, just as I would overcome everything else.
You should have been here, Will, I told him silently. It was you she really needed.
When you looked at me with those limitless, deliquescent eyes of yours, I used to wonder what it was you could possibly see in me. Now I know that is a foolish view of love. You and I could no more not love each other than the earth could stop circling the sun.
I thought he was the saddest person I had ever met, in those moments when I glimpsed him staring out the window.
Well, you’re a lucky man,” Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. “She certainly gives a good bed bath.
Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite?
Just a little homesick, Alice answered. It was the truth, she thought. She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.
We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom – no financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing to anybody.
I looked at my boyfriend and wondered if he was actually an alien.
Castles trump feminism every time.
I tried to show him that he was the answer to a question I hadn’t even known I had been asking.
Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience? Plan a fun family day out.
I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being. I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That’s what he was asking me to extinguish – the small child as well as the man – all that love, all that history.
He had a dozen arguments with her before breakfast, and a thousand passionate reconciliations before he went to sleep.
She didn’t talk about it: if this past year has taught her one thing, it is to live in the present. She immersed herself in every moment, refusing to cloud it by considering the cost. The fall would come – it always did – but she usually collected enough memories to cushion it a little.