Status Updates From Someone from the Past: A Lo...

It wasn't obvious to me then, but later I saw that at this point I felt I had earned some gratitude, which should be paid. Accountancy is a system that should be confined to offices.

"There's a lot of typed paper, sir, one of them said.
'It's the first part of a novel, I explained.
'You are a novelist, Miss Graham? the Inspector asked.
“I'm the first half of a novelist,” I said, and he gave me the nearest thing to a dirty look I'd had, so far.

People rarely enter our lives like actors striding on to a brilliantly lit stage. We become conscious of them, like dimly apprehended figures in the muffled hour before sunrise: and not all of them stay with us in the hard light of noon.

Laurence was one of the misty figures; a man we were hardly aware of, until, by imperceptible stages, we knew him well.

He leant forward and took my hand.
While I waited, letting his fingers tell me, I looked past his dark, elated face at the rookery of waiters that flapped by the service door, and on to the china birds that perched in the trellis. They would have a sentimental value, later. Then I felt his warm hand grow cold, it was as if he had been reminded of death.