The Perfect Girl Quotes
"Beware that sign, I would say to them, if they asked. Be careful what you wish for, because everything has a price."
"I’m small-boned, I have pale, clear skin, and my hair is long and very blonde but thin: cobweb-caught-in-sunlight hair, which looks amazing against my black dress."
"It’s not until I play the first note that the concentration I need, and the music itself, will wrap around me, pure and white like a shroud, and everything else will disappear."
"We’re more in the business of providing refuge for one another, and by that I mean a strong, safe place to reside, a place where we are almost certainly what two less reserved adults would call ‘in love’, though we would never say that."
"The blue-grey ocean, surprisingly calm, was visible here and there where clefts in the landscape revealed it, and Lundy Island was clear as day offshore, peaceful, ancient and cold."
"I pitied Zoe her hours in the cell. Even my clients who’d been to prison said that they hated being in police custody more than anything."
"The show must go on. The sound is a warm bath of notes at first, then a river flowing. It’s something beautiful, which I wrap around me to shield me from what’s just happened."
"Zoe, our dear Zoe, has caused domestic bliss to implode yet again."
"The sitting room window has been thrown open but the heat inside is still stifling. I hear Barney Scott crunching on the gravel outside and see him leaning against our front gate, waiting for Katya."
"Did you think you could stay hidden forever?"
"Chris was on his way to be the key speaker at a backslapping networking lunch for successful entrepreneurs, millionaires who want to be gazillionaires."
"Maria is such a natural mother. I’m a lucky man, after everything."
"She was like a fine piece of porcelain; I couldn’t believe my luck."
"Lucas was devoted to her of course but it wasn’t easy towards the end."
"You see, you always rip basil, Zoe. You never cut it, because that crushes its edges. Tear it to let the flavour out gently."
"I had a hot chocolate. With cream on top. And so did he."
"It’s probably just one of those lists of stupid or funny things from the Web, which is the kind of thing he usually sends me and which makes Mum and Chris annoyed because I laugh out loud unexpectedly when I read them and that is apparently ‘very rude to the people around you’."
"My IQ has been officially measured as 162. This puts me in the category of ‘exceptionally gifted’. It means that I beat Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking who scored 160."
"Just on one side, Not too much, not too little."
"I thought he was somebody I knew. But, on reflection, I think I was wrong."
"Absolutely bloody starving, I could eat a horse."
"You would tell me the truth, wouldn't you, Zoe? You know it's important that we're all honest in this family?"
"I’m sorry, Chris. I didn’t mean to. Truly, I didn’t."
"We have nothing! And she has all of this. She shows off with her piano still and she lives in a mansion like nothing ever happened."
"It was Mum’s fault, that she pushed me too hard with the music, that it had turned me into somebody I should never have been trying to be."
"We weren’t going to dwell on the past, Mum told me, we were going to look forward, to try to start something fresh."
"Once I’ve turned the headlights off, I notice that the darkness is musky and thick with humidity."
"I’ve let you down again. It’s all I ever do. Why don’t you leave me, Tessa? Just leave me."
"We first met when I was doing my large animal placement as part of my training, and Richard was doing his PhD."
"Beside me, really peacefully, Grace falls asleep. I love her when she’s asleep because she looks perfect."
"It would be a burning apocalypse, a red-rimmed sunset and the horsemen pounding so fast."
"‘You never do anything by halves, do you?’ he said."
"The choice that I gave to Mr and Mrs Guerin and Zoe, was a difficult one."
"‘You’ve killed people, Zoe,’ he said, ‘who’s going to believe you?’"
"Be strong, Butterfly, you’ve nothing to feel bad about. Nothing. Remember that. You’ve paid for what you did and you have a right to a life."
"Richard hasn’t found that thing which will allow a slice of light to pierce the darkness in his head yet."
"Alone, I’m not enough to anchor Richard in the present, and so of course I wonder if a family would have been."
"I spend a good ten minutes shaking him into a state resembling consciousness so that I can persuade him to pee."
"Weariness and loneliness saturate me and make me cry, just for a moment or two."
"I feel as though I’m the last person on earth."
"I feel as if I would break if somebody touched me."
"Some things settle under your skin and don’t ever go away, no matter what you call them."
"I’m used to feeling things on my own so I edge away to make sure that she doesn’t touch me at all."
"I wonder if the butterfly is still crouched in a high corner of our landing ceiling at the Second Chance House."
"It’s déjà vu: Zoe Maisey sits in front of me, and once again she’s white with shock."
"In the Unit, all of us were there because we’d done something bad so it didn’t make me different from anybody else, and that was relaxing in a way, it truly was."
"Don’t be afraid, Zoe,’ he says. ‘The police will protect you until they know what’s happened. They’ll do a better job of it than me."
"I’m shot through with irritation at this, because I don’t feel as though his concern is for me, but for himself."
"Why are you incarcerating us? What are you doing that’s in any way useful?"
"We’re just in the process of opening up the investigation into your wife’s death, sir."
"I have a baby! And children I’m responsible for. This isn’t right! Look at them!"
"It’s difficult to do what I’ve decided to do, I know that from before, because early interview is the softly, softly stage, when you feel like the police are your friends, that they understand, and it’s so tempting to talk, you even want to talk, and after the accident I told them everything, and I didn’t realise that each word was another scoop of the shovel in Project Digging My Own Grave."
"I’m not always good at knowing when I’m annoying people but I can tell that I’m royally pissing him off now."
"Reality check, Dad, I’m from Devon and I killed people, but you never stand up for me!"
"Not crying publicly could be seen as a little tribute to my mum."
"My marriage was lovely at first, and my only sadness was settling down so far away from my mother, so I wasn’t able to be with her when she died."
"The problem was, Chris never bonded with the baby."
"After Lucas’s birth we still gave the impression of being a happy family, and we often were. But something had changed."
"The problem was that since Lucas had been born, Chris had become prone to losing his temper."
"I kept the ring on for a week before going to hospital to have it cut off and receiving antibiotics for the infection that had crept into the broken skin underneath."
"Chris didn’t always behave like that. In fact he was mostly very generous and loving, but there were triggers."
"And every time, I forgave him because, if I’m honest, I could see no choice but to leave him."
"The problem is, that a life lived in fear takes its toll on you."
"And, for the first time in my life, I stood up to him."
"But, you know, in the end, I think it was a fear of death, of death’s power."
"I wrote the letter. It was my ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order."
"My attempt at suicide, and the DNR order, were a final act of love, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done."
"I need somebody to offer me respite from my family. I want his advice, yes, but right now I also want his affection too."
"Annoyed too, because what appointment could possibly be so important that Sam wouldn’t at least take the time to exchange a quick couple of words with me."
"They’ve found evidence, in the house, so yes, I think family are under suspicion. I shouldn’t tell you that, Tess, so please don’t say that I did."
"I think of Philip’s mobile phone. The one he’s been anxiously passing from hand to hand for most of the day, as if it’s a lifeline connecting him to another world, one he’d rather be in."
"I’m not used to it. Usually, it’s me who has to end a call prematurely, or behave furtively."
"I want to tear Lucas’s eyes out. But I want to hold him too."
"It was an accident; I swear it, Zoe. I’m sorry."
"Help me. I want her to stay here, just for a bit."
"‘This shows you a slice of your brain,’ he says, ‘as if we were looking at it from the top of your head down towards your feet,’ and with my pen he points at several different areas on the screen. ‘There are lesions visible there, there, and there’s one more, which you can probably see here.’"
"‘Your self-esteem,’ Jason told me, ‘is at rock bottom, and I don’t like to see it that way.’"
"I realise that I love the way that only I can see into his soul."
"But what about the panop messages I sent you? The police will find them on your phone."
"‘Anger can be a release,’ Jason told me once, though he was simultaneously advising me not to display it quite as much as I did then."
"‘But what you’re asking me to do is wrong.’ ‘It’s not wrong if it ends up being right. Think about it.’"
"It’s the natural order of things that so fascinated me as a child, and still does."
"‘Philip won’t have Zoe, you know.’ ‘I know,’ he replies. ‘I know he won’t.’"