(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.

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.

Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.

It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.