“She could already feel the dryness in her throat, the catch in her voice, when shed have to stand up in class and tell everyone what her grandparents did. After the other kids read out their work o...”

“She felt as if she had no bones, like a jellyfish, hooked from the sea. She walked slowly towards them, her ears ringing, but they ignored her. All except for Levi, who stood at the end of the brid...”

“The lines began to sing, a shrill, electric song, and then the cacophony of the train roared out of the darkness. The carriages were almost empty and painfully bright as they hurtled along the trac...”

“Most of the vegetables in the allotments had died back but one, tended by a Jamaican man, was full of squash. They lay among the dying leaves, rimmed with frost, huge, orange and alien, half hidden...”

“A cool white, wintry light glazed the buildings on the highest hill: Wills memorial, the unsightly chimney from the hospital, the modernist cathedral in Clifton. The jumble of styles and eras lent ...”

“When Autumn was born, it was as if she recognized her, as if shed always known that it would be her, this little person who had come to live with her and reside permanently in her heart. It was a l...”

“Sara, we have to go," she whispers, even though my dad isn't there to hear her. She's not crying. She's calm. Matter-of-fact. As if she's asking me whether I want mayo or mustard on my sandwich. Ex...”

“The sky is deep, the sky is dark. The light of the stars is o damn stark/When I look up, I fill with fear, if all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead s...”

“It is said that in death, all things become clear.”