The Girl In The Letter Quotes
"Were it not for you, Elvira, I would have given up the fight to stay in this world much sooner."
"You were loved, Elvi, every minute of every day that you were growing inside your mother’s tummy."
"Look for the good in everyone, Elvira, and be kind."
"I love you and I will be watching you and holding your hand for ever."
"I am three months pregnant. It is too late for anything to be done; it is God’s will that our baby be born."
"The fifties wasn’t a good time to be an unmarried mother."
"Few of us have won an Oscar or an Olympic gold medal, but most can relate to the struggles, on some level, our idols have been through."
"People fascinate me. What you see is very rarely what is going on inside."
"You think you’d only miss the good bits about a person, but you miss everything."
"Please, my darling, I beg of you, I will make you happy and we will be a family."
"No one could rest until the nationals were finally put to bed or Murray lost his voice – whichever happened first."
"Since Emma had been born, she hadn’t been able to put in the sort of hours she had in the past, and Murray seemed determined to keep her down."
"Wanting to stop that split second she had left of her eighteen years of innocence before the world as she knew it changed forever."
"‘Well, Ivy,’ he had said after he’d examined her, ‘the reason you’ve been feeling unwell is because you’re going to have a baby.’"
"Ivy had been desperate to see him. She had told him about missing her period, and although he had smiled at her and told her not to worry, his voice had turned cold."
"‘I think they found her and punished her for escaping,’ said Kitty, staring into his eyes for the first time."
"Dear Lord, may the fallen find their way back to you through the strength of their prayers and hard work."
"‘This place is nuts,’ said Sam. ‘It feels like the girls are still trapped in here.’"
"She was hiding behind one of the gravestones, signalling to me."
"On any other day I might have thought she wanted to play a game with me, but I was very upset about my mother so it troubled me straight away."
"Nobody was looking at me. People ignored children much more then, and of course my parents weren’t there."
"Despite the smudges of dirt, the knots in her hair and the oversized brown overalls, it was like looking in the mirror."
"She been out in the snow for hours, waiting in the graveyard for me since the morning service."
"They’ll kill me if they find me. They’ll kill me."
"She’s not buried at St Margaret’s, you know."
"Maybe she escaped and someone took her in. If they lied about what happened to her, maybe they lied about burying her."
"My mother was a very ill woman; there’s no way my father could have coped with twins."
"You are not to blame for any of this, Kitty."
"She was my child, Father, I had a right to know she had been returned to St Margaret’s."
"It often happens that a couple who think they can’t have children fall pregnant after they adopt."
"You don’t return a child as though she’s a gift you don’t like."
"She looked better, don’t you think? I read in the newspaper that there are more people than ever signing up as donors."
"Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."
"Things at home got unbearable. Uncle Frank was so angry that he raised his hand to me most nights."
"St Margaret’s is way out in the countryside, beyond the church at Preston. ‘This is your stop, love,’ said the driver, without me even asking him."
"She looked very solemn and her hands were clasped in front of her, and as she walked silently towards me, the keys hanging from her belt jingled noisily like those of a jailer."
"No one talks to me about what will happen when my baby comes, but I know there are babies here because I hear them crying at night."
"I miss so much, my love. I miss our drives down to the seafront, I miss the feel of the grass on my skin as we lay looking up at the sky."
"Please, I’m begging you, come quickly, or I shall go mad in this place before long."
"Please, my love, come and get us, so that we may be a family at last."
"Sinners can find their way back to the Lord Jesus Christ through the strength of prayer and hard work."
"You can't go back, but you can move forward if you're both prepared to work at it."
"If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room."
"Dreams are unresolved issues trying to process themselves in your brain while you sleep."
"By proving it, I didn't spend all that money on your education for you to be a quitter."
"Despite spending months working with an interior designer, she could never settle on what she liked."
"She had moved house so many times, desperately trying to find somewhere that felt like home."
"She’ll need you a lot more when she’s older, and if you’ve given up a job you love and are utterly miserable, what kind of example is that to set for her?"
"As soon as she did, she hated whatever it was and wished she’d chosen something different."
"The Lord had chosen her to cleanse lost souls so they could present themselves to the all-merciful Father at the gates of heaven and be allowed in."
"Walking into the pub had made her recall their first date, which they’d spent in a cocktail bar on Clapham High Street, making their way through every drink on the menu until the manager had physically thrown them out."
"She loved Ben more than she had ever loved anyone, but they were so bloody miserable at the moment and hurled such bile and vitriol at one another that there just didn’t seem to be any hope for them."
"That was why people broke up, she thought, handing over her cash. It was why they walked away."
"She’d done jobs where she’d watched the clock all day, feeling as if her soul was being sucked out through her fingernails."
"The underground sewers and tunnels remain accessible at this time and we must be extremely vigilant in order to avoid any such tragic accident occurring again before the final date of demolition."
"It was torture to be so close to her and not be able to talk."
"The nursery was cold and colourless, nothing like the room she had imagined her baby would spend her first months in."
"Most of them cried non-stop until their next feed, but some had given up crying because they knew already in their little hearts that no one was coming."
"Whilst there was still hope, she had to fight, but time was running out."
"Through my tears I tried to tell him I was sorry, and pleaded with him not to take my baby."
"She smiled when she said it: a smile I will never forget."
"Breathing slowly in and out until somehow the hours passed."
"Something inside me died that night, and for the first time since she was born, I couldn’t hear Rose’s cry."
"I can’t go on living in this hell if they take Rose away from me."
"There and then, she made a decision: if she had to be here, powerless to help herself or Rose, she would do everything she could to protect that little girl."
"I think a baby being taken from its mother can affect families for generations."
"She was beautiful, with long eyelashes and dark brown eyes holding a stare that seemed to take her away for minutes at a time."
"I’ve never cried for her, Samantha, not once. It’s as if I never really believed she died."
"He would rather die pursuing his dream than live a half life, a life of drudgery, like his father had resigned himself to."
"His father had warned him repeatedly that beautiful smiling girls turned into miserable nagging wives who made you give up your dreams."
"The letters became so disturbed that he began to fear what would happen if she ever got out."
"Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear, one step, two step, tickle you under there."
"Just let me sleep now. Please, let me sleep."
"I have in my possession some letters that I believe were written by the same Ivy as is in that picture, but I am desperate to meet you to find out."
"I dream of running away, but everywhere we go we are watched."
"They are the victims as much as us; what misery they must tolerate."
"I hate you for what you have done to us. One day you will live to regret it."
"I’ll never forgive myself for not fighting harder; it destroyed our lives."
"She was my only child, Samantha. I was supposed to protect her, and I let strangers stop me from doing that."
"I was haunted by her. I couldn’t stand it any more; I decided I had to tell him the truth."
"I don’t know how long I stood there, but a man came and startled me, so I ran all the way home."
"After the shock wore off and I realised I had got away with being responsible for my father’s death, I developed a whole new perspective about it and it became rather inspiring."
"‘Evelyn,’ he said over and over as the blackness took hold, ‘I’m sorry.’"
"I hadn’t meant to doze off, but exhaustion had overwhelmed her."
"She still couldn’t believe she was going home."
"I’m looking forward to putting the whole episode behind her."
"The creaking of the boards beneath her feet slicing into the silence."
"Her heart lurched as she quickly closed the dormitory door behind her."
"Each cot contained two children, aged between one and seven, tied by their ankles to the bars at either end."
"Even the hairs on your head are all numbered."
"The very hairs on your head are all numbered; do not be afraid."
"I hadn’t wanted to give her Ivy’s letters then, because they were so upsetting."
"We had twenty incredibly happy years – but I sometimes still see friends bickering with their husbands and I want to scream, 'You don’t know how lucky you are to have someone to get cross with!'"
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do."
"She was such wonderful company after he went."
"The parish had no obligation to show any of its records before now."
"The ground underfoot had turned to a murky sludge and dark clouds threatened more snow."
"I warned you about these records at the time, Father, that they could be open to scrutiny in the future."
"‘Please . . . no,’ he spluttered. ‘Stop, what are you doing?’"
"Don’t do this to them, hold your breath, go back up for more air."