Night Music

You are the one honest thing I've done in my whole life.

What they did not know was that she chafed at the never-endingness of it. No sooner had she cleaned one surface than it was dirty again. Clothes, even those barely worn, found themselves in crumpled heaps in linen baskets so that she yelled at Kitty and Thierry, hating her shrewish voice. Once, bored to within an inch of her sanity by the act of hanging out yet another lineful, she had simply turned, dropped the basket and walked straight into the lake, pausing only to remove her shoes. The water had been so shockingly cold that it had knocked the breath from her chest, and left her laughing for the sheer joy of feeling something.

You could choose to be happy or you could not.

For evil to survive, all that is necessary is for good people to stand by and do nothing.

They sat in companionable silence, sipping their tea.

The dark was oppressive, unrelieved by any neighbouring buildings or sodium light. It felt primeval,

as long as one of your children was unhappy, you couldn’t be happy. I must try harder, Isabel told herself.

Most people complained about having builders in. Kitty remembered the mothers at her old school exclaiming about the dust and dirt, the cost and upheaval. They talked as if it were an ordeal that had to be endured. Like surgery.

Life. Sometimes it can be really, really crap, and just as you think it’s going to be like that for ever, it changes.

Sometimes I feel I could stay in the woods for ever.’ He nodded. ‘I often think,’ he said, ‘that when you’re out here at daybreak you can pretend you’re the only person in the world.

The woodland smelled of moss, damp wood and healthy decay, so unlike the sinister damp of the house, where she often found herself wondering what might be rotting away around them.

she was one of the lucky few who were not deprived by marriage and motherhood of their creativity. Or, more importantly, their passion.