Quotes from Lisa Jewell

She tries to claw back the stolen half-hour, but her adrenaline is pumping again; her husband went somewhere last night and has woken up in his friend's flat and doesn't know what happened in between. Her husband, who has a career and a mortgage and two children to think about. Her husband, who is forty-five.

And I know that this will be my last sunset. this one, here, right now, on Christmas Eve, playing out in violent flames of red and gold across the horizon. And I know that these are my last moments. And that is fine. That is absolutely fine.

and you know my alarm goes off at six thirty yet you couldn't even wait for half an hour because you're too fucking selfish. So yes, thanks a lot, Nathan. I've had four hours' sleep and now I have to get our kids up and get them ready for school and

He clutches his head. 'This is … this is insane, Lula. This isn't you. You're not fucking gay. This is her. She's done this to you. She's fucking groomed you. Can you not see that? She's groomed you.

You know that's it now, don't you? You know you can't be Noah's mother any more. Not now. No court in the world would let a person like you raise a child. No court in the world. I'm going now, Tallulah. I'm going back to the house and I'm taking Noah, and you will never see him again. Do you hear me? You will never see him again.

Other people have been out here all day, enjoying themselves, enjoying the weather, enjoying their friends and their children. Other people have been living.

She hadn't missed out on anything: there was always food and holidays abroad and shopping trips to Oxford Street and takeaways on Friday nights; there was always enough of everything. Her life was perfect. But it was matte, not gloss.

I'd subliminally determined at this point that the only way to really know what was going on in the world was to listen to women talk. Anyone who ignores the chatter of women is poorer by any measure.

But no, Scarlett was even worse than Rex, if anything, always wanting to be outdoors, always wanting to run, to disobey, to talk. Oh my God, to talk.' She rests a delicate hand against her cheekbone and then rubs it across her forehead. 'Such a nightmare of a child. And then the teenage years. Oh my goodness. The boys – you know, she lost her virginity when she was thirteen. Thirteen. She was obsessed with boys.

Where Josie is stiff and unanimated, her mother is all expansive hand gestures and chatter. She's glamorous, too, clearly takes care of her appearance, sees herself as a woman worthy of attention and respect.

Oh, this isn't country,' says Liam. 'This is not country, believe me. I was brought up on a cattle farm in Gloucestershire. That was country. This is just a nice place for people to live who don't want to live in cities.

Yet somehow she found herself embroiled in a Bohemian, self-centred family like the Jacqueses. How did it happen? When did it happen? And why did it end the way it appears to have ended?

Thirty-one.' 'Not young.' 'No. Not young. She was building a career.' Alix sees a sour look pass across Pat's face. 'Well,' she says. 'Nice if you can plan it that way, I guess.

My sisters both had Rett syndrome. It wasn't supposed to happen twice but then they found it was down to a mutation in my dad's sperm.

She wants to ask Pat why she didn't plan it that way. She was clever and had ambitions. Why did she get pregnant at twenty? Why didn't she go back to university afterwards? But she doesn't. Instead, she slides the photo back

Alix knows that she deserves better than being abandoned by her husband twice a week while he gallivants around spending money on tequila shots and hotel rooms, that she deserves her messages to be replied to, her calls answered, a proper explanation for the absence of her husband for twelve straight hours. She knows it, but somehow the pendulum of pros versus cons keeps swinging back to the pros.

My life had actually begun. Or at least that's what I told myself. That's what I believed. It's only now that I can see how wrong I was. That I was just handing myself from the hands of one controlling person to another.

But it is clear to Alix that Pat is actually a raging narcissist, and that no child of a narcissist ever makes it out into the world unscathed.

Yeah, but, Lules – a social worker. Do you know how draining that will be? How hard? The hours you'll have to work? The stuff you'll bring home with you? Wouldn't you rather just get, like, a shop job or something? Something easy? Something local?

But she is remembering now. Cooking doesn't just nurture the recipient; it nurtures the chef.

The knot in Kim's stomach hardens and she turns to Megs and she says, 'What the fuck is the matter with you? Huh? I mean, what the fuck is the fucking matter with you? Our kids have been missing for three days. Three days! And all you can do is moan and tut and sigh and act like this is all some kind of massive inconvenience. Well, I'm so sorry to drag you out of the pub, out of your back garden, so sorry to keep you from getting on with your day.

And the interview itself: reliving the early days of her relationship with Walter; telling her about her terrible mother; the look on Alix's face of rapt fascination, as though Josie were the most interesting woman she'd ever met in her life.

And they are a part of you. And with Viva it sometimes felt like we were continuations of the same person, that I began where she ended, and vice versa.

All men are weak," said Phin. "That's the whole bloody trouble with the world. Too weak to love properly. Too weak to be wrong." My breath caught at the power of this statement. I immediately knew it to be the truest thing I'd ever heard. The weakness of men lay at the root of every bad thing that had ever happened.