Quotes from Lisa Jewell

And you – you get to swan off every day to your precious little studio, and make your pretty little necklaces with your lovely daddy at the end of the fucking line ready to bail you out every time you go into the red and your lovely little mortgage-free apartment and – and your youth and you have no idea, you literally have no idea about anything, Rachel. You're a fucking child.' Michael ripped the duvet away from himself and stalked to the bathroom.

the one that didn't involve tiptoeing around a middle-aged man's fragile masculinity, bringing his flaccid penis back to life like a paramedic every night.

But it's terrifying to think that I never knew her at all. Not even a tiny bit.

Is it any wonder that Alix is so torn about her marriage, when her husband is capable of such acts of generosity and affection, whilst also capable of making her want to die?

None of them seemed to care. They described her as cold and secretive, difficult and demanding. They described Justin as a hippy, a space cadet, as too nice for Birdie.

The blackness faded over the years, but it never went away. Sometimes a good day might feel grey. But nothing ever felt white. Not ever.

can't believe you, Lules. You binned me off because I kissed my ex, and all the while you've got a secret fucking baby.' Tallulah throws

No, darling, I'm fine, you just relax." He knew she was being facetious but he also knew that if he wanted to be able to carry on lying there reading a book, he should not acknowledge this.

But, in the story that this spinning Rolodex of endless and infinite universes gave to me, this is where I am and I should be glad and grateful. And in a way I am.

Absolutely spine-chilling stuff, with some shocking glimpses into the darkest corners of humanity: we guarantee you'll be bingeing the whole thing in a day.

Hi! I'm Your Birthday Twin! A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

her heart suddenly expands and contracts with the knowledge that this boy is a part of her and that he loves her, that he is not seeking out his mother, he is content for her to come to him in the dark of night to comfort him.

I'm not the most together person in the world and it doesn't take much to make all the wheels fall off.

She presses send and then exhales and rests the phone on her lap.

This year she thought of the honeyed glow of the Lansdowne, the buzz of chatter, the champagne in ice buckets on outdoor tables on warm summer days, and she thought of the little bit of money her grandmother had left her last month in her will

She thought of how she'd contorted herself and her habits and her behaviour for twenty years to be a person who would not be raped, and now she had been raped in the place where she was meant to be safe, by the person who was meant to protect her. She felt the artifice of the last twenty years of her life, the pointlessness and futility of it. She might as well have taken the shortcut, worn the tarty top, flirted with the shady guy. She might as well have lived her life free.

Such a shit, her big brother. He hid it with a mischievous veneer of dark humor, but she sometimes suspected that the darkness ran much deeper.

She didn't need 'little chunks of home'. They were like slightly sinister postcards from old enemies.

had been attracted by Josie's slight weirdness: the denim, the old husband, the clipped, detached way in which she spoke. It would be easy to assume that all her weirdness was a result of having spent her childhood with a narcissistic mother and her adult life with a man like Walter. But what if the weirdness was innate?

remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing. So whatever you're feeling now, it's temporary.

A life lived in fast-forward and now, apparently, she should peak and crest and then come slowly, contentedly down the other side, but it doesn't feel as if there ever was a peak, rather an abyss formed of trauma that she keeps circling and circling with a knot of dread in the pit of her stomach.

She loves that Nathan thinks she's pretty, but she also wishes that Nathan could see the beauty in less conventionally attractive women, too. It makes him sound shallow and misogynistic when he denigrates women's appearances.

Yes. It's terrible. Only slightly more terrible than a husband who doesn't come home for a dinner that his wife has cooked for him and spends the whole night out somewhere in his work clothes.

ever since I did what I did to him. I am Phin's living, breathing nightmare and he hates me. And when you hate someone, it leaves deeper scars on your psyche than loving someone ever can.