Courtney was astonishingly reckless. A kid without reck was a dangerous thing. Other children in the play park yelled and screamed and laughed but Co… - Kate Atkinson

What a good husband you are,' Nancy said afterward, 'always taking your wife's side rather than your mother's.' 'It's the side of reason I am on,' Teddy said. 'It just so happens that that's where you're always to be found and my mother rarely.

Love at first sight, she wrote giddily to Millie. But of course such feelings weren't 'true' love (that was what she would feel for a child one day), merely the false grandeur of madness.

Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.