I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

You don’t mind when he stares at you.” Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. "He doesn’t stare,” I said. “He looks.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet.

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing – a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t use to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.

He scooped up my arm, swung me round. “Let go, Cecil,” I said. “I’ve a strange dislike of being forced.” “But Briony,” he said, “I’m so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think!” Why didn’t he?