Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.

Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enought to bury her alive.

So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.

He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.

As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.

It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.