The Darkest Evening Quotes
"She would fight for him, with all the weapons she had."
"In the darkest days of her illness, she’d been warned that a child of her own might never be possible."
"When was the weather forecast ever accurate?"
"I need to find out what happened to this little one’s mother."
"Parenthood must be a challenging business these days."
"It’s time you moved from that team, find a boss who appreciates you."
"She reminded Vera of a child, buried in sand."
"We’ll have a quick word before they disappear."
"She felt the old need to please, to make herself useful."
"If you work in the arts in this philistine nation, you can’t afford to be squeamish."
"She was still skinny. It still looked as if her wrist would break if she picked up a cup of tea, but she was getting better."
"She needed to be private to be healthy, she said. She held her small secrets to her like a kind of comfort blanket."
"I was thrilled to have a grandbairn and I don’t care what people round here think."
"I saw myself sitting there, with the baby on my knee."
"Lorna was always more complicated than that. I should have realized."
"She made that very clear. She said she was an adult."
"I told her I’d support her, whatever happened."
"The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was prying."
"She didn’t communicate much and when she did it was on her own terms."
"I never asked if she was still seeing Thomas’s father, but maybe that was it."
"I was supposed to be going to see her yesterday. But it had started to snow."
"She didn’t seem to think that I wanted to know she was safe."
"She’d made a friend. An older woman, who used to teach her."
"I was pleased there was someone kind to look out for her."
"I’d made him feel foolish. There are some men who hate to feel foolish."
"It was the happiest day of my life. Better even than the birth of my own girl."
"I don’t think there’s much we can do about it."
"She never married. ‘Too picky, my mother said, but I think it was more that I valued my independence."
"I like the company of young people. I enjoy talking to them."
"I thought it was something she had to do for herself. The last thing you’d want would be your parents running your life. You’d want a bit of control."
"There are times when it’s a good thing to be deaf."
"You bring them up to be polite, then they turn into teenagers and all the manners disappear."
"It’s not the most glamorous of gigs, is it, for an up-and-coming artist?"
"You know what it’s like. You keep to your own little groups, people who share your own interests."
"The boss was always interested in coincidence."
"If she’d made an effort to know them, they might have thought she was on the scrounge too."
"She couldn’t have known about Lorna’s problems but felt the pain of guilt all the same."
"Vera was feeling odd. She was used to being alone in the world."
"The thought that there could be another generation of Stanhopes, as excluded as she had been, made Vera think differently about herself."
"‘Sorry, everyone!’ It was time to focus, to shut out any other emotion until the case was over."
"‘And it ends like this: ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep.’"
"If you hadn’t been so clever, adding the details in the hope we’d believe you, so arrogant, we’d never have caught you out."
"That’s how it works. There’s an obligation."
"She must have got the title of the painting from the poem, don’t you think?"
"‘It can’t have been easy,’ Vera said. ‘All that gossip again.’"
"I thought it was my pride that was most hurt."
"I was more patient when I first went to interview her, asked her the right questions, she’d still be alive."
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep."
"Poor woman. Nobody should be left like that."
"We need to keep an eye on her. You know what she’s like."
"I wouldn’t have wanted to do it in the Land Rover, but it would be possible."
"It’s that time of year. Every primary school in the county is holding its nativity play this week and they all expect me to be there."
"I’m not the only gran going along with the bairns."
"Apparently, she made a monumental cock-up on an employment case and cost her client, and so her chambers, an eye-watering sum in compensation."
"I’m better looking for the boy. I think I know where he might be."
"We’re trying to trace the father of her child. Do you have any idea who that might be?"
"I wasn’t there to judge, just to offer help and support."
"The lad’s been sleeping with Jill and I moved out to the spare room."
"She’d forgotten how far it was to the mill and had a moment of anxiety, thinking that she’d wandered away from the footpath, that she was lost in the forest."
"The trees were closer together than she’d remembered and in places she had to push her way through."
"It was a kind of claustrophobia – she’d never been good in enclosed spaces – and the same panic as when she’d been waiting alone with Constance Brown’s body."
"Brown clouds parted and suddenly there was moonlight."
"The house itself was dark, but a security light outside shone past the outhouses and bins."
"The darkness was deep and dense and occasionally she stumbled."
"A light flickered in the window and Vera could smell woodsmoke."
"She switched off her torch and waited for a moment, partly because she was knackered after the walk."
"The pain was so intense that she couldn’t help crying out."
"She put her hand to her face and felt blood."
"She’d heard nobody approaching and still there was silence."
"She moved past the door to the other window that looked into the room she hadn’t seen on her visit."
"The forest was dark once more. Had the shooter given up?"
"There were loose ends to be tidied and she drove back to Kirkhill."
"She found them all sitting at the kitchen table, a cafetière of coffee going cold in the middle."
"She was so cack-handed she couldn’t contemplate changing a nappy."
"She woke to Joe’s voice, almost shouting into his mobile because phone reception was so bad."
"It was the stuff of horror movies: the picturesque scene was hiding something monstrous inside."
"She thought she was always an observer, always looking out."