Quotes About Family

But she has five years to find Him and marry him and then another five years to have a baby, maybe two if she likes the first one. She's not in a rush. Not yet. She'll just keep swinging left, keep looking nice when she goes out, keep accepting invitations to social events, keep positive, keep slim, keep herself together, keep going.

The front door goes again, and Josh appears. Cate's heart lifts a little. While Georgia always arrives with news and moods and announcements and atmospheres, her little brother arrives as though he'd never left. He doesn't bring things in with him, his issues unfurl gently and in good time.

How much more of the taxpayers' money can I throw at this thing? An evil woman. A woman loved by nobody, missed by nobody, a woman with shards of ice in her heart. A case of child abuse where no evidence remains, where numerous people were in the house, where no records of any description exist for an entire six-year period of time, where a family of itinerants moved in and took over without anyone ever knowing. It's impossible. It's terrible.

My father's going to take everything you own and then break your life.

Hanna. Her middle child. The difficult one. The tiring one. The one she wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with. And a terrible thought shot through her, so fast she barely registered it. 'It should be you missing and Ellie eating beans on toast.

Yes," she said. "Yes. A hundred percent. My mum is so cool. And all she wants in the whole world is for me to be happy. So if you make me happy, she'll like you.

You didn't lose me, Laurel. I'm still yours. I'll always be yours.' 'Well that's not strictly true, is it?' He sighs again. 'Where it counts. As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who has shared a journey with you, and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don't need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are forever.

doorway for a second and looks at her mother, absorbs the shape of her and the exquisite feeling of her existence in the world.

The things that happened behind the closed door of that house were appalling, and like a coward, I did a flit. I left them to it.

all happened so slowly, yet so extraordinarily quickly, the change to our parents, to our home, to our lives after they arrived.

Sophie's gut reaction had been no. No no no no no. She was a Londoner. She was independent. She had a career of her own. A social life. Her family lived in London.

bin that everyone seemed intent on not emptying, contents pressed down into its bowels by the lazy, flat-palmed hands of her family.

No child wants to feel that they weren't wanted, even if they don't care much for the abandoner.

Dad. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I want to kill myself. The thought of you, seeing that. It makes me want to kill myself.

Same reason she didn't tell you how hard she found it, being the spare part in your great dynasty. She obviously didn't feel like she could talk to you.

When the children were small, Laurel's mother would occasionally make small, raw observations about gaps between phone calls and visits that would tear tiny, painful strips off Laurel's conscience. I will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she'd vowed. I will never expect more than they are able to give.

And she also said that Phoebe was going out with Leo's (the sisters' dad) little brother when she died but also people thought she might have been going out with Leo too even though he was four years older than her! And also that Phoebe is Tyler's mum's sister! So the girl on the bench is actually Tyler's aunt.

She is a mother again at fifty-five. She is making packed lunches in the mornings and writing down term dates in her diary. She is doing two school runs a day and putting someone else before her at every juncture of her life.

She told us all these lies about her, that she used to be a prostitute, brought tricks into the house, that she used to beat her and starve her and of course we were small so we believed her. But then our dad told us it wasn't true, that Mum was just jealous of Grandma because she'd been with Dad before her.

And it was Dad who helped monetise it all, got me on Glitch, managed my subscriptions, opened my bank accounts. He did all of that for me. He was the one who made me famous.

Your father was not a boss-eyed sailor. Or a rapist. He was a legend.

This time next year the skinny wife would be living in some shit flat somewhere because it would be all she could afford, and his kids would have to shuttle back and forth between two shit flats and sit making awkward conversation with Alicia, and looking after their mum because her heart would be broken and she wouldn't be the mum they knew anymore, she'd be a new mum, and their childhoods would be shattered and changed. And

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.

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