Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular? - Michael Cunningham

End of story. ‘Happily ever after’ fell on everyone like a guillotine’s blade.

Parents are the mystified criminals, blinking in the docks, making it all the worse for themselves with every word they utter.

The Taylors have this gift for imperturbable presence. They are not nervous talkers. The Harrises, on the other hand, have always been constant talkers, not so much for the sake of entertainment or information but because if a silence caught and held for too long they might have fallen into a bottomless sullen discord, a frozen mutual quietude that could never be broken because there never had been and never would be a shared topic of sufficient reviving urgency (not at least one either of his parents could bear to broach), and so they needed to hydroplane forward together on an ever-replenished slick of remark and opinion...