Status Updates From The House of Fortune (The M...

'Thea, you are not like other girls?'
'I am not?'
'You are infinitely superior?
Thea wants him to enumerate her so-called superiority, to parcel it out in understandable blocks. She thinks of the Eleonors and Catarinas of this city, and why exactly Jacob thinks her to be so different. She suspects that she might dread his answer, that it is rooted in unforgiving soil.

Bella feels her own statements wash back over her. They are surprisingly cynical to her, heard from the mouth of another.

Her mother feels more present in the way her father and aunt tiptoe round her absence, how their silences build an outline of a woman glimpsed only fleetingly in the corner of a room.

As de Vries assesses the painting, Nella wonders: what does it do to a person to have their fantastical views removed, these visual stories contained within heavy oak frames? Do you make up more in your head in place of the want? She has become so accustomed to these various pictures, even the ones she didn’t like—(…)