How quickly life could dissolve into its more ugly elements. - Kate Atkinson

He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother’s arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it.

Needs must, and so on.

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.