Those who said family mattered above all else were wrong. People you love, who love you back, matter above all. Crap people you happen to be related to: you need to stop thinking you owe them a limitless number of chances to hurt you.
What would success feel like to you? She could finally answer that: self-respect.
Laurie had no faith anymore. As a lifelong believer in The One, in monogamous fidelity to the person who your heart told you was right for you, she was suddenly an atheist.
Dan had said it wasn't planned, but Laurie was at the stage where, if Dan said it was raining, she'd go outside to check.
Laurie loved the interior's golden glow and heaving warmth, compared to the violet-black cold of Manchester outside. She did like being around people, she realised, just not people she knew and was required to talk to.
"How do you know, when you've fallen for someone in a long-term, could marry, settle down forever sort of way? Please don't say 'you can't imagine life without them' or similar because I can't imagine life without Hattie but I don't want to marry her. Something that might give me real insight."Oh . er.' This was a role reversal, Laurie ... feeling like the knowledgeable one. "Hmmm. It feels like a conversation that you never want to end, I suppose. A renewable energy source. You know how with some people you can't get chatting off the ground? They're hard work? Falling in love is the extreme opposite. Endless fascination. It's effortless. A spark turns into a flame turns into a fire. That doesn't go out.