Katherine Faulkner > Quotes

“The privileged backgrounds of the accused. The vulnerability of the victim. The beauty of the backdrop. The ugliness of the detail.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“It is merciless, how the world moves on after the death of a person, how they can disappear without a trace, like footprints in the melting snow.”
― Katherine Faulkner, The Other Mothers

“Eighteen thousand people,’ Rachel announces triumphantly. ‘And you’re knocking down a load of council houses for a few fancy apartments with a gym.’ She rolls her eyes, grinning, as if this is all hilariously funny, instead of hideously uncomfortable. ‘I bet most of it is foreigners, isn’t it? Buying from abroad? I bet half of them won’t even live there.’ Lisa’s expression hardens from lukewarm to glacial.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“feels like a dead time to me. A time defined by absence, by waiting.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Things just went from bad to worse that night in the club, when Rachel came on the scene. We didn’t know her name, then. We just knew it was the girl from the boathouse floor. Daniel and I were only there because Rory had dragged us there to charm some sleazy client. It was the worst luck in the world.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“The thing about Serena is that she somehow seems to collect female friendships, effortlessly, like the bangles she wears on both wrists. I think of that awful hen weekend in Cornwall again. There were friends from Serena’s primary school, secondary school, university, work, ‘hockey’ – I had lost count. How is it that some women amass such huge collections of people who love them, yet I can’t even go to an antenatal class and make one nice, normal friend?”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“left Cambridge ten years ago. Yet Helen seems to lean on the memory of those summer days like a crutch. I don’t know why she must talk about it so endlessly, why it seems to matter so much more to her than it does to us.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Meanwhile, the girl has already had to have two new identities as a result of being named on the internet. She has been moved away, for her own protection, to an area where she has no family support. Something he says makes me wonder if she has made an attempt on her own life.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“She knows my parents are dead. She knows my work friends don’t want to meet up with me. She knows all these secrets now – I have revealed them to her, one by one. She knows I’ve got no excuse.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“loudly”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Geese emerge from the pale cloud like specters, their black heads and necks just visible, their feathered bodies fading into white.”
― Katherine Faulkner, The Other Mothers

“Trying to work out where it all began, where it all started going wrong. And I suppose the real answer is it started years before you could have ever imagined it did.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Oh, come on. You were together, by the bookcase. Just the two of you, for ages. You were standing really close to her. Why did you have so much to talk about when you’d only just met her?”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Sometimes, for a few hours, he convinces me. I allow myself to decide it’s not my fault, not my problem. I mean, we’re not responsible for her, are we? We were just gullible enough to take her in for a couple of weeks.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“would never occur to me to ask people to pay all that money to celebrate my life, my marriage. I remember I’d been pleased to have been invited, even if the emails about it had been rather bossy. I hadn’t really known what to expect. Perhaps there would be five or six of us, I had thought – just her very closest friends, a private chef, perhaps a few after-dinner games?”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“With every new misery, another thread comes loose.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“How do some women amass such huge collections of people who love them, yet I can’t even go to a prenatal class and make one nice, normal friend?”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“It can be hard not to stare at happy people. They are mesmerizing somehow.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“I know it is a small thing, but when your life has shrunk as much as mine has, small things take up more space than they should.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Avoidant attachment: some key signs —No distress caused by mother’s absence —Shows little interest when she returns —Avoids eye contact —Shuns physical touch —Excessive independence —Resists help to complete tasks Avoidant attachment may be the result of abusive or neglectful caregivers.”
― Katherine Faulkner, The Other Mothers

“Don’t patronise me, Charlie. Don’t you fucking dare. And anyway, I obviously did have to. I obviously can’t rely on you to tell me the truth.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Not you. But them. Them and my fucking brother. You know after everything, he still expects me to bring him stuff, to his parties. It’s the only reason the two of them want me around. Fucking hypocrites.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“Would I be so cheerful, in her situation? Although she hasn’t said so explicitly, it’s clear there is no father in the picture. And she is so young. I wouldn’t have the strength to do all this on my own. I mean, he might have been a bit useless lately, but I don’t know what I’d”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“After Grenfell we’d done a big investigation into these blocks, tried to find out how many more were death traps, coated in dangerous cladding, at risk of infernos. I’d been haunted by thoughts of fire for a long time after covering Grenfell. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people, trapped like animals on the upper floors.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“I can’t understand sometimes how things like that are still the same. Things that she touched, things that she wore, that were once warm against her skin, mirrors that held her reflection. They are all still here, in the world, with me. But she is gone, and never coming back.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“think he just didn’t know what to make of it, of their exuberance, the decadence of it all, the platter of riches he was being offered. A few times, I noticed him glancing over, as if pleading for help.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“And I learn, for the first time, what power there is in justice, in being believed.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“He’d stormed upstairs. I knew he was going to have a cigarette on our balcony. He likes to think I don’t know about the cigarettes. Or the coke. He likes to think I don’t know a lot of things. I’d picked up the magazine, thrown it in the recycling. On the cover, his face looked like somebody I didn’t recognise.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park

“They did their best, of course. But it is, in the end, not an easy thing to hide. The unmistakable stench of desperation. The cringing eagerness of the salesmen of damaged goods, for whom they’d finally found an interested buyer.”
― Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park