irina

“Carmen's ex-boyfriend Tom was a social worker and weekend DJ who eventually left her for reasons I never quite managed to grasp. Carmen typically speaks about him the way one might refer to a degree: a three-year period one has to endure in order to talk with overbearing authority on exactly one subject. She is the world's living expert on loving and losing thirty-year-old men named Tom.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“I had been hoping to defer the call as long as I could, so that I should have something to look forward to in the dead waste of time I foresaw before me, after my dinner was done with, but, at a quarter before seven, when darkness already surrounded the castle, I could contain myself no longer. I telephoned my mother. And astonished myself by bursting into tears when I heard her voice.”
― Angela Carter

“Every couple, I think, enjoys its own mythology, recollections like note cards to guide you around an exhibition:”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“Here are some things I didn't have space for: putting on Alone by Heart and miming the lyrics in Leah's face until she started laughing, Leah's long hands and her yellow hair and the werewolf quality of her eyebrows. The way she walked around the flat in shorts and a sports bra and told me off for staring. The way she kissed me and then apologized for biting. The time Leah told me that making me laugh was an achievement because my face was so typically set against it. The way I was often bored and Leah never was. Talking with Leah on early dates about the panic of doing what everyone else was doing and then feeling like a dick about it. The way Leah was kind by nature whereas I always seemed to struggle. The way she tipped my face towards hers and told me otherwise. "You're the kindest person I know and I know six or seven people.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea