A Place Like Home: Short Stories

The more tenuous the ties that hold us together, the easier it is to say goodbye. [Julia, 'Harbour of Love']

There was, Julia Prescott decided, only the finest razor-edge between depression and despair. Depression had been constant for weeks, familiar, creeping up on her like a prowler in tennis shoes. But despair was the dreaded spectre behind the closed door, springing forth just when you least expected it. ['Through the Eyes of Love']

The worst thing that can befall a family is to have its mother in hospital. The entire world becomes disoriented, the home has lost its heartbeat, there is no answer when you call. [Victoria, 'Magic Might Happen']

Luckily we don't inspire the same reactions in every new person we meet. Otherwise the world would be in a sorry mess. [John Lippiatt, 'The Stone Boy']

But being with someone you love isn't being with people. It's like being with the other half of yourself. [Julie, 'The Stone Boy']

I always thinks that a garden is the best sort of legacy a person can leave. [Caroline, 'Skelmerton']

That is how it was with them. A closeness, a rapport that was almost entire, except for these small niggling uncertainties which, most of the time, she [Janey Ashcroft] was able to ignore, but sometimes, like tonight, grew like balloons to such size and importance that she wondered how she was going to be able to cope with them. ['Anniversary']

Loving a person, she [Rachael] had told herself, is not finding perfection, but forgiving faults. ['Someone To Trust']

And she [Joanna Crayshaw] had discovered that if you were safe and happy and loved, it became easy to laugh at yourself. ['A Place Like Home']

I think,' said Leo [Walton], 'that he [William, 'Tiger'] must have fallen in love with you, he certainly remembered you with the eye of love.' ['Skelmerton']

A year. They had known each other a year. They [Janey and David] had this closeness, this rapport. But the final certainty was missing, and it was this void that, because she loved him so much, she was learning to live with. ['Anniversary']