12
" She stared unseeing at the park railings, the black paint flaking away in chunks, exposing the Victorian iron beneath. Why hadn’t it come? How had she got to thirty-one, been married and nearly divorced, and never felt the knee-weakening passion even frumpy, mousy Tory Maxwell had enjoyed? Michelle knew herself well enough to know the answer. Because she hadn’t let it come. It was easier to keep everything at arm’s length, under control, because this new Michelle, the bright tough Michelle, was not the sort of girl who let things happen to her, not like hopeless romantic Tory. The old Michelle, the girl who’d sat in the library with her shoes off, reading when she should have been revising, reading when she should have been training, reading when she should have been listening to good advice and not believing in easy happy ever afters . . . That Michelle let things happen to her, not the other way round. Her heart contracted as if an invisible hand were trying to squeeze it dry. I want to be loved, she thought in one sudden clear pang. I want to be held. I want to be swept away by someone. When "
― Lucy Dillon , The Secret of Happy Ever After
