I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.

The secret is that there is no secret.

The only way my head was going truly somewhere else was to travel to a different life and not a different airport.

But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.