Nicci French

It's what the loss uncovers in you that brings on despair, not the loss itself.

I wake in the night. Or sometimes I don't wake in the night. It hardly seems to make a difference.

If you behave as if you are all right, then one day you will be. You have to go through the motions of surviving in order to survive.

She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more until people rang to complain. Nor did she check her answering machine messages. In fact, it had only been in the last year that she had finally bought an answering machine, and she steadfastly refused to have a mobile, to the incredulity of all those around her, who didn__ believe that people could actually function without one. But Frieda wanted to be able to escape from incessant communications and demands. She didn__ want to be at anyone__ beck and call, and she liked cutting herself off from the urgent inanities of the world. When she was on her own, she liked to be truly alone. Out of contact and adrift.