Home > Work > After You (Me Before You, #2)
121 " Bilmiyorum... Sanki çörek yerine... donut olmuşsun gibi... "
― Jojo Moyes , After You (Me Before You, #2)
122 " awkward tears or nodding silent "
123 " I know the subtlest movements of the city because I no longer sleep. "
124 " Even thinking about heading up there again made my heart thump harder; it took nothing for me to recall that sense of the world disappearing from beneath me, like a rug pulled from under my feet "
125 " right now.” If he had been anybody else I might have hugged him just then, but we were English and he had once been my boss of sorts, so we simply smiled awkwardly at each other. And possibly wished we were somewhere else. "
126 " Had he actually possessed the ability simply to airbrush an entire daughter out of his conscience? "
127 " All babies look like currant buns to me. "
128 " felt an almost umbilical pull toward home, the comfort offered by a conventional family and a traditional Sunday lunch. "
129 " Okay. Well. Here’s a real question. How long do you think it takes to get over someone dying? Someone you really loved, I mean.” I’m not entirely sure why I asked him. It was almost cruelly direct, given his circumstances. Perhaps I was afraid that the compulsive shagger was about to come out to play. Sam’s eyes widened just a little. “Whoa. Well”—he looked down at his mug, and then out at the shadowy fields—“I’m not sure you ever do.” “That’s cheery.” “No. Really. I’ve thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people anymore. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become . . . a doughnut instead of a bun. "
130 " Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity. "
131 " And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway? "
132 " Beside me Sam had started to shake silently. "Stop them," he murmured. "I'm going to bust my stitches. "
133 " And the City had begun to alter me. I had come to know my little corner of it, its rhythms and its danger points. I learned that if you gave money to the drunk at the bus station he would come and sit outside your flat for the next eight weeks; that if I had to walk through the estate at night it was wise to do it with my keys lodged between my fingers; that if I was walking out to get a late-night bottle of wine it was probably better not to glance at the group of young men huddled outside Kebab Korner. I was no longer disturbed by the persistent whump whump whump of the police helicopter overhead. I could survive. Besides, I knew, more than anyone, that worse things could happen. "
134 " What am I meant to do with what’s left? "
135 " Algunas veces sentía como si todos estuviéramos vadeando en nuestro dolor, reticentes a admitir a los demás qué tanto nos estábamos ahogando. "
136 " things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent: That whatever you did would probably be wrong. "
137 " I viewed them as if I were on the outside of something looking in. I laughed at their jokes, winced internally at their tales of inappropriate tears or misjudged comments. But what became clear as I sat on my plastic chair and drank my instant coffee was that I had somehow found myself on the other side. I had crossed a bridge. Their struggle was no longer my struggle. It wasn’t that I would ever stop grieving for Will, or loving him, or missing him, but that my life seemed to have somehow landed back in the present. "
138 " It was as if a light had gone on: the only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving. "
139 " These are the things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent. That whatever you did you would probably be wrong. If you were cruel or dismissive or neglectful, you would leave scars upon your charge. "
140 " Don't think of me too often... Just live well. Just live "