|
3b3f3fb
|
Before we belonged to anyone else, we were each other's.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
e04f56a
|
could i have loved you better? maybe. if that's true, then i'm sorry. could i have loved you more? i don't think it's possible.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
d5a040e
|
you're my first born child, and the person who first showed me the miracle of this love a mother has for her child.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
3af911b
|
Adulthood isn't black and white - it's a thousand shades of grey. Or taupe. It's not who you are, it's where you are.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
0ce3bb7
|
the big problem with motherhood of girls, it seems to me, is that we're both women.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
3d53f9f
|
she loved to stand in the middle of a market square, or a park, or a beach and take in the smells and the sounds of a world that was completely new to her. she loved being an anonymous extra in a crowd scene, like some real-life where's waldo - a tiny face, wide-eyed with wonder, in a vast, ever-changing picture.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
39cc0c8
|
please don't carry my love for you with you forever. but don't let that be all. our capacity to love is vast - all of us. my daughters taught me that. there is room.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
f24220e
|
I mean, I've always loved her, we've been best mates for years. When I started this thing, I thought that maybe, maybe there was something else - the germ of something else that could happen between us. But I don't think I was entirely serious. It was speculative, you know. But, bloody hell, it's bitten me in the arse. And now I love her. I think about her all the time. When I'm not with her, I'm just waiting for the next time I can be, and..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
956b950
|
all this pain. all this crying. it wasn't that she hadn't expected it. she just underestimated it. it felt like a heavy, dark blanket that had been pulled across all of them. she hadn't know that it would make it difficult to breathe. she hadn't guess that it would seem so enveloping. and so total, and so permanent.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
27d7cfa
|
You've got the wrong criteria." Huh?" You need to make more intellectual decisions, fewer emotional ones..." 'Decisions' came out a bit slurred. What the hell are you talking about?" You need to go for someone who won't let you down." How are you supposed to know if someone's going to let you down or not?"
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
3641139
|
It couldn't last of course. They both knew it. Not the evening, Not the holiday.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
f81a37a
|
mum's dress. mum loved big parties. she loved dressing up and champagne bubbles tickling her nose, and dancing with her arms above her head, shoes thrown to the edges of the dance floor, and shouting inane happy things at people.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
7ecea8c
|
amanda thought about her addiction to being on the move. about whether she was running away or running toward.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
15169f3
|
and there you go - i was alone, without love, for eight years. and it took me about twenty minutes - over a cappuchino and an egg salad sandwich - to fall in love with him.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
a427a30
|
i just want my girls to have babies. that's all. so they know what i know.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
4751cac
|
and even if he knew the answer, he would keep on doing this. because, the thing was, he loved her. he couldn't walk away if he wanted to.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
582c870
|
i want to live. simple as that. we all do, don't we?
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
f3833b7
|
You made new rules for the people you loved. They weren't subject to the same judgment criteria you reserved for the rest of the world. In some ways you were way easier on them, and in others, much harder.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
b5d7980
|
Like sisters throughout time, whatever battles raged between them, it was always, always, all four of them against the rest of the world.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
0d323a0
|
It contains some - not all, but some - of the things I want my daughters to know. And the greatest of these is love. please know that you had mine, unconditional, and powerful and awesome. So strong that I can't believe it will die with me. I want to imagine it as a living thing that goes beyond my body and my death, as a vine that has grown and wound its way through the very core of you all, and cannot be uprooted or destroyed, but rather ..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
cd6470d
|
I don't remember why it all went so wrong. I mean, I do remember. I remember what i did. I just don't remember why anymore. This - you and me - this feels so right. It just seems stupid - so stupid - that we had it before, and we let it go. We wasted so much time. I'm sorry.' She was close to tears. 'Hey. Don't. There's no point in that. It's the past, and that's where it belongs. This is us now. We're here.' But where's here? We're hiding ..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
1b1cd89
|
life's too short, after all, isn't it? not to do the things you want - the things that make you happy? hannah had been thinking that quite a lot t. oday
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
ef5019c
|
amanda lifted a large handful of pictures out of the box and dropped them into her lap, flicking through them as they fall. they told a thousand stories, didn't they? the pictures of your life. but they left a lot out, too.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
8750b95
|
You care about me. We're in a room together, with a hundred other people, and you know ehre I am, who I'm talking to. We enjoy each other. We're a bit alike, but different enough. You see things in me that you don't see in your wife and you know, deep down, that if we had met in another time, when it wasn't impossible for anything to happen between us, that we could have had something. And you think it might have been spetacular. And you kn..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Noble |
|
4f25079
|
The cracks in your heart are there so the light can shine through.
|
|
light
heart
love
heartache
|
Elizabeth Noble |