I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I'm gone. It's like marrying a policeman.

I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.

And Clare, always Clare.

When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.

Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.

Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.