Atlantic Books Quotes

“Here we are, squabbling over tuna fucking sandwiches and there she is – almond-shaped green eyes, snub nose, lopsided grin, the hint of a dimple in her cheek. ‘MISSING’ is stamped over her face in large black letters.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Make no mistake, my darling. I am coming for you. I will take you back.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Where I’m taking you, no one will ever find us. We’ll have all the time in the world for you to grow to love me as much as I love you.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Let her go… Because that girl has got to die so that you may live.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“Evie is our beautiful, dark-haired, green-eyed child,’ I say. I can hear the tremor in my voice. ‘Like many seven-year-old girls, she’s obsessed with princesses. We think she looks more like a fairy. She loves Lego and painting. She laughs easily. She has pretend tea parties in a tree in our garden and invites all her dolls. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. Please find her. Please bring her back to us. We miss her beyond measure. She is the love of our life.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“I can’t believe I ever thought reading to her was a chore. I’d sit here some nights, fidgeting, thinking of all the things I needed to do, my voice hoarse, reluctant to read, ‘just one more chapter,’ wishing I could escape to my glass of wine. What did I have to do that was so important? What could be more important than reading my daughter a bedtime story?”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“She said that the mummy and the daddy took their daughter up onto the moor. They had a picnic. They’d brought all of her favourite food – cheese sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off and strawberry-pink cupcakes – and when the little girl had finished eating, she looked around for her mummy and the daddy. But they’d gone. They’d left Evelyn on the moor by herself.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“I don’t believe he was deliberately taking indecent pictures, they’re too artistic; he’s managed to capture that magical moment when a child’s mind spins into a make-believe world. But actually, what Jack did is steal something – a child’s innocence – whilst creating something darker that will resonate with the adults looking at these photos: themes of sexuality and death, the leitmotifs that run through fairy tales, the stories that we tell ourselves about our children.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Mum, your heart is the same size as your fist,’ she told me once in delight, and we both made our hands into fists and held them against our chests and bumped them together: hands as hearts.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Tesco at the best of times is soulless – but it’s so much worse at 6 in the morning. It’s not as empty as I thought it would be. Who the fuck shops at 6 a.m.? e florescent lights flicker. e shelf upon shelf of coloured cans make my eyes go funny. Everything is hard and shiny and there’s so much fucking choice. Why do I have to choose from thirty kinds of granola? Do I want Country Crunch or Rude Health? Raisins and almonds or tropical? Goji berries and chia seeds or Strawberry Surprise? I’ll just buy the Tesco range – that’ll be easiest. No, wait, there’s Tesco finest*, Tesco Everyday Value and Tesco Free From. What can be so damn fine about granola? You eat it everyday and what could it be free from? It hasn’t got anything unhealthy in it! What could one possibly take out? Actually, we don’t need any fucking granola.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“They stole you from me. They took you away for seven years. Your entire lifetime. A life sentence. The waiting has been endless. The watching. The planning. Now, finally, I’m almost ready. I’ve got a few things to take care of and then we can be reunited.”
― Sanjida Kay, The Stolen Child

“Did you know my name means God?”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“It’s as if we’ve stepped into a Constable painting, a bucolic vision of England. There’s a single oak ahead of us in the heart of the valley; the grass is lime-green and the steep sides of the Cotswold escarpment are covered in dense woodland.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“Jack thinks I take things that’ll cover every eventuality, but I don’t. I only take what’s necessary. When I’m with my family, I bring what will keep them safe. But suppose you’re on your own, like I am now, and something happened to you, and you couldn’t get back, what would you need? What would be important to you? When you think about it like that, it’s surprisingly little.
A credit card and a passport; a driving licence. Mini first-aid and wash kits. A decent moisturizer, lipstick and lip balm. It’s surprisingly freeing because, of course, you can’t take what is most important to you: your family and friends. I have photos, though, printed out, not just on a phone. Mobiles are easily lost, aren’t they? And two recipes, the ones I think I couldn’t live without. But all of it, when it comes down to it, is dispensable. Almost everything is.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“I wonder if that is what he really feels; if he’s accidentally hit on the words that will set off small explosions in my mind – trigger- phrases like risk and safety, danger and security, love and loss, and the other ones, the ones that I never say.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“His eyes, staring out at her from the photograph, looked – she searched for another word to describe them and failed – he looked evil. There was a blankness to him, as if the normal human emotions that you took for granted in everyone you met had been excised. It was the kind of stare you might see in a wolf or a shark; a creature who did not care how kind you were, what your story was, the dreams you had for your child.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“I walk over to see what it is: it’s a paperweight with a dandelion clock perfectly preserved inside. I hold it in my hand. It’s smooth and heavy. It would be just right for my husband. I can imagine it sitting on his desk: a single, solitary objet d’art in the midst of that smooth expanse of wood. As I pay for it, I start to blush, a blush that grows stronger and deeper, flaring over my chest and making my ears burn.
I’m buying a present for my husband while I’m with my lover.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“I doubt you are a martyr, but should you decide to risk your own life, I can assure you that, as well as killing you, I will hunt down your family and I will kill them, and then I will find your friends and I will kill them too.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“She realized that she no longer believed her husband: it was as if the certainty that he’d betrayed her had settled into her bones like the chill of a damp day.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“It didn’t seem right that this should be the place to find out she was going to die.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“She emerged between the dunes onto a wide expanse of sand that seemed to stretch endlessly to either side of her: the grey of the sand melded seamlessly into the sea and sky, so that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. The wind hit her with such force, it felt like a living thing. There was nothing between her and Norway.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“She had a moment of clarity, sharp and hard, that pierced the fogginess of her thinking: this is what it’s going to be like from now on. I will live in fear of every man, of every stray sound, of every footstep in the dark, of every shadow in the night.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“His voice reminded her of Christmas: of old movies and cigar smoke, of sweet sherry in cut-glass tumblers and the crackle of a real log fire.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“He would do his best, but his best would not be good enough. It would never be good enough to repair the hole that would open in her child’s heart.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“The birds?’

‘Yes. Brent geese from Svalbard and bar-tailed godwits from the Arctic tundra. Thousands of them, loads of different species. They’ve flown from Scandinavia to spend the winter here. At night, I can hear them honking. Pink-footed geese from Iceland, barnacle geese from Norway. When I lie in bed at night, I imagine I can hear the beat of their wings.
Yesterday I walked along the beach. It was clear, for once, and the sun was starting to set. I saw a murmuration of plovers. Hundreds of them, making these strange, unearthly shapes across the sky; the light caught their wings, and the whole flock shone like gold.

Every day I think about filling my pockets with stones and walking into the sea. I will aim for Iceland. I will never stop. But then I see a flock of golden plovers wheeling in the sunlight and, for a few brief moments, I forget who I am and why I’m here and what I’ve lost.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“The birds were starting to leave for Scandinavia and Siberia. Long V shapes trailed across the sky and, at night, flocks of bar-tailed godwits wheeled above the beach. The e icy wind, straight off the Arctic tundra, had abated slightly, and the days were growing longer. One night there was a storm, and in the morning the beach was littered with debris: eel grass torn from the beds around Holy Island, bladderwrack encrusted with barnacles, scraps of fishing net and opaque plastic bottles.

The blaze roared, orange and amber and red; sparks danced in the darkening sky. In the distance, the sea pounded on the shore and the wind wheeled about her; a curlew keened, calling like a lost child.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“She doesn’t like alcohol in cakes. That’s Katie’s thing. And she isn’t into gluten-free or, you know, polenta. She doesn’t think it’s right for cake. Anyway, it’s what poor people eat.’ My dad winces, in spite of his best Dr Seuss face. ‘In developing countries like Mexico, I mean. You have to be middle-class to afford it here.’ That didn’t help. When you get stuck, stick to the facts – that’s what Dad always tells me. ‘She’d like a Victoria sponge with lots of cream and some fruit. Raspberries and jam. Something simple.’
He looks disappointed. I can see he wanted a statement of a cake. Like his love.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“What’s going to happen when they find out what they’re really like? And they have to spend the rest of their lives married to each other?”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“I sure as hell don’t want to be dragged round a mansion by an over-excited single parent downloading bollocks about the Victorians on 4G.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret

“I go downstairs to my bedroom and get out my diary from where I’ve hidden it in the wardrobe under my jumpers.
I write, ‘My mother has a secret.”
― Sanjida Kay, My Mother's Secret