It struck Harold afresh how life could change in an instant. You could be doing something so everyday – walking your partner’s dog, putting on your shoes – and not knowing that everything you wanted...

Things don’t so much end as disappear. They don’t so much begin as turn up. You think there will be a time to say goodbye, but people have often gone before you know about it....

The regrets about all she had let go flooded her. Where had all that enterprise gone? All that energy? Why had she never traveled? Or had more sex when she could? She had bleached and...

Did you have any yourself?” she said.”Just one.”Harold thought of David, but it was too much to explain. He saw the boy as a toddler and how his face darkened in sunshine like a ripe...

All in all, I’d heard people do a lot of things with words. I’d heard them not say what they meant and I’d seen them not do what they said, but I’d never met a...

…People would make the decisions they wished to make and some of them would hurt both themselves and those who loved them, and some would pass unnoticed, while others would bring joy.

Mrs. Sussex said Byron’s loss would grow more bearable. But here was the nub: he didn’t want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap,...

I actually hate Christmas,” says Eileen. “Everybody has this idea you have to have a good time, like happiness comes in a ruddy packet.” Her face is flushed with heat. “One time, I stayed in...

I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the...

Sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.

He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her re lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.She had...

It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of...

If we can’t accept what we don’t know, there really is no hope.

There was a patient who sat with her family in a circle around her, all holding hands. Sister Philomena asked if they would like to join her for prayers and they said yes, they would....

Jim looks out the car window with his nose pressed to the glass. Sometimes he pretends to be asleep. Not because he is tired, but because he needs to be quiet.

The sky and the sun are always there. It’s the clouds that come and go.

The people he met, the places he passed, were all steps in his journey, and he kept a place inside his heart for each of them.

The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday.

If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I’m going to get there.