After You 笔记76条

After You 笔记76条_第1张图片



1. Have they thought of issuing bulletproof vests? I bet I could buy a good one in New York if –’ ‘Louisa.’ 

(Moyes, Jojo)

2. ‘I like to say that although we’re called the Moving On Circle, none of us moves on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.

(Moyes, Jojo)

3. like to say that although we’re called the Moving On Circle, none of us moves on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have

(Moyes, Jojo)

4. Camilla and I exchanged wry glances, and then, almost impulsively, I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She smelt of expensive department stores and her hair was perfect. ‘It’s lovely that you came.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

5. ‘You could try to sound a bit pleased that I didn’t actually die.’ I passed Treena a tray of glasses. ‘Oh, I got over my “I wish I was an only child” thing ages ago. Well, maybe two years or so.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

6. When people say autumn is their favourite time of year, I think it’s days like this that they mean: a dawn mist, burning off to a crisp clear light; piles of leaves blown into corners; the agreeably musty smell of gently mouldering greenery. 

(Moyes, Jojo)

7. ‘You just missed his mum. She brought him the most delicious homemade steak and ale pie. You could smell it all the way down the ward. We’re still salivating.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

8. She slowed in front of us, her expression grave, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. For a moment I thought I might pass out. Her eyes met mine. ‘Tough as old boots, that one.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

9. I saw him even as I turned the car into the ambulance-station car park. He was striding towards the ambulance, his pack slung over his shoulder, and something inside me lurched. I knew the delicious solidity of that body, the soft angles of that face.

(Moyes, Jojo)

10. A solitary cloud drifted across the blue. Sam shifted his leg closer to mine. His feet were twice the size of my own.

(Moyes, Jojo)

11. my role as a mother, my family, my career, even my faith. I have felt, frankly, as if I descended into a dark hole. But to discover that he had a daughter – that I have a granddaughter – has made me think all might not be lost.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

12. Across the rooftops the sun had started to slide, its orange glow diffused by the lead-grey air of the City evening.

(Moyes, Jojo)

13. Some time later, after Lily had gone to bed, I joined Sam in the kitchen. For the first time in weeks some sort of peace had descended over my home.

(Moyes, Jojo)

14. the first time in weeks some sort of peace had descended over my home. ‘She’s happier already. I mean,

(Moyes, Jojo)

15. I was shivering. Sam took his jacket off and hung it around my shoulders. It carried the residual warmth of him and I tried not to look as grateful as I felt.

(Moyes, Jojo)

16. ‘You know, your dad said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: “You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”

(Moyes, Jojo)

17. ‘Far easier for you to just stick with that depressing little job and complain about it. Far easier for you to sit tight and not take a risk and make out that everything that happens to you is something you couldn’t help.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

18. Any news? I texted Sam. It felt odd speaking to him while having concurrent conversations with Will in my head, a strange infidelity. I just wasn’t quite sure who I was being unfaithful to.

(Moyes, Jojo)

19. I spent the morning driving around central London. I parked on kerbs, leaving the hazard lights flashing, as I nipped into pubs, fast-food joints, nightclubs where the cleaners, working in the stale, dim air, peered up at me with suspicious eyes.

(Moyes, Jojo)

20. ‘Oh, come on, Lily. A live-wire like you? You must know that nothing comes for free.’ He looked down at the image. ‘You must have worked that out a while ago … You’re obviously good at it.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

21. I walked back across the road straight past him, fumbling in my bag for my keys. Why did fingers always turn into cocktail sausages at moments of stress?

(Moyes, Jojo)

22. walked back across the road straight past him, fumbling in my bag for my keys. Why did fingers always turn into cocktail sausages at moments of stress?

(Moyes, Jojo)

23. ‘Well, it’s hardly a home, is it? It’s got no furniture, and nothing personal. You haven’t even got pictures on your walls. It’s like … a garage. A garage without a car. I’ve actually seen homelier petrol stations.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

24. ‘Ah. Then you need a castle, Dad. Castles trump feminism every time.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

25. There was a murmur of agreement at that word. It was what we all wanted, ultimately, to be freed from our grief. To be released from this underworld of the dead, half our hearts lost underground,

(Moyes, Jojo)

26. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning.

(Moyes, Jojo)

27. She was not supermodel beautiful, but there was something compelling about her smile.

(Moyes, Jojo)

28. wondered about drawing the curtains, then remembered there was nobody to see me, other than the hens, which were huddling out of the wet, grumpily shaking drops from their feathers.

(Moyes, Jojo)

29. He was just gulping down the last of his coffee when Richard appeared.

(Moyes, Jojo)

30. Sixteen was still a child, surely. For all her posturing, I could see the child in Lily. It was there in the excitements and sudden enthusiasms. It was there in the sulks, the trying on of different looks in front of my bathroom mirror and the abrupt, innocent sleep.

(Moyes, Jojo)

31. Sometimes I watched Lily laughing at something on television, or simply gazing steadily out of the window lost in thought, and I saw Will so clearly in her features – the precise angles of her nose, those almost Slavic cheekbones – that I forgot to breathe. (At

(Moyes, Jojo)

32. ‘You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.’ ‘Will was not a waif and stray.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

33. I couldn’t hear his words, but I could hear his tone: kind, reassuring, emollient. When he finished, she left a short pause, then said, ‘Okay. Fine.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

34. But I knew very well how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was inside.

(Moyes, Jojo)

35. Bathed in the evening sun, and surrounded by the scents of grass and lavender, and the lazy hum of the bees, we walked slowly from one slab to another, Sam pointing to where the windows and doors would

(Moyes, Jojo)

36. And then we were in the traffic, weaving in and out of the cars and lorries, following signs to the motorway.

(Moyes, Jojo)

37. ‘Martin’s.’ When I asked if he was her boyfriend, she pulled the universal teenage face in response to an adult who had said something not just spectacularly stupid but revolting, too.

(Moyes, Jojo)

38. She swayed past me and headed for the music system, where she turned up the sound to a deafening level. I raced towards it to turn it down, but she grabbed my hand.

(Moyes, Jojo)

39. ‘It’s Lily. Duh.’ She fell through the door as I opened it, half laughing, reeking of cigarettes, her mascara smeared around her eyes.

(Moyes, Jojo)

40. We reached the outskirts of town shortly before eleven. Summer had brought the tourists flocking back to the narrow streets of Stortfold, like clumps of earthbound, gaudily coloured swallows, clutching guidebooks and ice creams, weaving their way aimlessly past the cafés and seasonal shops full of castle-imprinted coasters and calendars that would be swiftly placed in drawers at home and rarely looked at again.

(Moyes, Jojo)

41. The phone rang three, four times, and just for a moment I was filled with the overwhelming urge to press END CALL.

(Moyes, Jojo)

42. Our eyes locked. The young are terrifying, I thought. They are without boundaries. They fear nothing.

(Moyes, Jojo)

43. My mouth worked silently around words I couldn’t find. How could I explain to this girl what Will and I had been to each other, the way I felt that no person in the world had ever understood me like he did or ever would again? How could she understand that losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill?

(Moyes, Jojo)

44. had driven to the supermarket on the other side of Stortfold, where she had chosen a huge hand-tied bouquet of freesias, peonies and ranunculus. Which I had paid for.

(Moyes, Jojo)

45. She let herself in and I followed awkwardly, feeling like an intruder. We were in a spacious, high-ceilinged hallway, with parquet flooring and a huge gilt mirror on the wall, a slew of white-card invitations jostling for space in its frame. A vase of beautifully arranged flowers sat on a small antique table. The air was scented with their perfume.

(Moyes, Jojo)

46. I could smell coffee. It took me several seconds to consider why the smell of coffee might be filtering through my flat, and when the answer registered I sat bolt upright and leaped out of bed, hauling my hoodie over my head.

(Moyes, Jojo)

47. ‘It’s not the Victorian age,’ said William. ‘You don’t have to wear widow’s weeds till you’re elderly.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

48. But the girl flicked her cigarette butt out of the window and turned to walk past me out of the room.

(Moyes, Jojo)

49. But the girl flicked her cigarette butt out of the window and turned to walk past me out of the room. ‘What?

(Moyes, Jojo)

50. I needed to be alone to digest what she had told me. It was too overwhelming. I didn’t know what to make of the spiky girl, who walked around my living room, making the air around her crackle.

(Moyes, Jojo)

51. needed to be alone to digest what she had told me. It was too overwhelming. I didn’t know what to make of the spiky girl, who walked around my living room, making the air around her crackle. ‘So did he not say anything about me

(Moyes, Jojo)

52. A girl’s voice. I peered through the spy-hole.

(Moyes, Jojo)

53. Mostly this anonymity suited me. I had come here, after all, to escape my history, from feeling as if everyone knew every thing there was to know about me. And the City had begun to alter me. I had come to know my little corner of it, its rhythms and its danger points.

(Moyes, Jojo)

54. And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking at a wound and refusing to let it heal.

(Moyes, Jojo)

55. How could I explain the way we had so swiftly understood each other, the shorthand jokes, the blunt truths and raw secrets?

(Moyes, Jojo)

56. ‘You’re making it sound like I’m out there slaughtering everyone’s reincarnated husbands.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

57. And now, after four weeks back in the house I’d grown up in, I could feel Stortfold reaching out to suck me in, to reassure me that I could be fine here.

(Moyes, Jojo)

58. My name would be tied to his for as long as there were pixels and a screen. People would form judgements about me, based on the most cursory knowledge – or sometimes no knowledge at all – and there was nothing I could do about it.

(Moyes, Jojo)

59. So here is the thing about being involved in a catastrophic, life-changing event. You think it’s just the catastrophic life-changing event that you’re going to have to deal with: the flashbacks, the sleepless nights, the endless running over events in your head, asking yourself if you had done the right thing, said the things you should have said, whether you could have changed things, had you done it even a degree differently.

(Moyes, Jojo)

60. ‘But you’re drifting. You don’t seem to be interested in anything.’ ‘Treen, I just fell off a building. I’m recuperating.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

61. I waited for the pang, but it was so mild it could have been wind. ‘They look … well suited.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

62. it was the first place I had managed to sleep more than four hours at a stretch since I had left;

(Moyes, Jojo)

63. Recalling a conversation I’d had with Will about careers, I wrote to several colleges about fashion courses, but I had no history of work to show them and they rebuffed me politely.

(Moyes, Jojo)

64. No two months had ever left me feeling more inadequate. I was lonely almost all the time. I hated not knowing where I was going to sleep each night, was permanently anxious about train timetables and currency, found it difficult to make friends when I didn’t trust anyone I met. And what could I say about myself, anyway? When people asked me, I could give them only the most cursory details.

(Moyes, Jojo)

65. Winter loosened its grip and the spring was beautiful.

(Moyes, Jojo)

66. ‘Bunch of bloody rubberneckers. Anyway, hurry up. I promised Thomas he could see your scars before I take him to youth club.

(Moyes, Jojo)

67. When your whole world shrinks to four walls, you become acutely attuned to slight variations in atmosphere.

(Moyes, Jojo)

68. Grief wells up again, like a sudden tide, intense, overwhelming. And just as I feel myself sinking into it, a voice says, from the shadows, ‘I don’t think you should stand there.’

(Moyes, Jojo)

69. Now I stand on the roof, staring out at London’s winking darkness below. Around me a million people are living, breathing, eating, arguing. A million lives completely divorced from mine. It is a strange sort of peace.

(Moyes, Jojo)

70. Around me a million people are living, breathing, eating, arguing. A million

(Moyes, Jojo)

71. The plants have long since withered and died.

(Moyes, Jojo)

72. I am suddenly bone-weary, but it is the kind of head-buzzing exhaustion that tells me if I go to bed I won’t sleep.

(Moyes, Jojo)

73. am suddenly bone-weary, but it is the kind of head-buzzing exhaustion that tells me if

(Moyes, Jojo)

74. I change into my pyjama bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt, then open the fridge, pull out a bottle of white and pour a glass. It is lip-pursingly sour.

(Moyes, Jojo)

75. I change into my pyjama bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt, then open the fridge, pull out a bottle of white and pour a glass. It is lip-pursingly sour. I study the label and realize I must have opened it the

(Moyes, Jojo)

76. He smiles, and for a minute I can see how he might be in other circumstances. A naturally ebullient man. A cheerful man. A man at the top of his game of continentally manufactured car parts.

(Moyes, Jojo)


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