Greenwich Park Quotes
"What did you do that day, after I was taken down? After the knock of the hammer, the soft swish of silk and cotton, as everyone else stood up?"
"Do you remember, when they took me away, how just for a moment everything was quiet, and my footsteps were the only sound?"
"When I think of you, as I often do, I always picture you in your kitchen, holding a mug with both hands, staring out of the window into your garden."
"Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen."
"The temptation of a sealed envelope. It’s always been too much for you, hasn’t it, Helen?"
"We are constantly reminded to stay in the shade, carry a bottle of water. It hasn’t rained for weeks."
"It can be hard not to stare at happy people. They are mesmerising somehow."
"I’m trusting you to tread carefully here. This is all for the end, and nothing came from me."
"When the court rises, I watch the detective carefully. I slip out as quickly as I can, and try to head in his direction."
"When I get home that night, I see Daniel’s trainers on the dust sheets in the hallway, where the builders have been traipsing in and out."
"Sometimes Greenwich can feel a long way from anywhere."
"I don’t care about the plaque, but I love the view from the balcony."
"She feels powerful to me, her kicking feet, her racing heart."
"The muscles in my legs growing hard and firm."
"Not much, but enough to make Helen’s little joke not very funny."
"The smell of the grass on the banks, the reflections in the water."
"I still remember the feel of his arms, the weight of him."
"Trust Katie to introduce inedible thoughts into a pleasant evening."
"I listen to Daniel’s breathing, deep, rhythmic."
"The sky is clear, and the air almost drinkable."
"The thought fills me with an irrational sense of dread."
"She looks at me, try to gauge whether or not she is being serious."
"You’ve got my card. If you want to, call me."
"Trust me, OK? Because I know other things. Things you really should know. Before this baby comes."
"No one minds that. Anyway, that’s the perfect time to have a party, because it doesn’t matter if things get ruined."
"I might as well have just told him they contain human body parts."
"You’ve been good to me. But you need to listen to me now, OK? Because I know other things. Things you really should know."
"We could do with having a bonfire anyway, don’t you think? We’ve got all those cuttings in the garden."
"I just want her to be quiet, I think. I just want her to go away. Leave me alone."
"I didn’t take a note from your book, Helen. Or a photograph. Honestly. That must have been someone else."
"I can’t understand why they’re doing it. Dad always said the house was perfect. That it didn’t need a thing."
"I wish I hadn’t shouted at Rachel. And now I think about it, I don’t even completely remember why I was so angry."
"I’d been haunted by thoughts of fire for a long time after covering Grenfell."
"I can already tell it will be replayed again for the news at six, then at ten, and round the clock on Sky News."
"Nothing will ever be the same, people say. And that’s what I want, more than anything."
"The pain was sharp as a knife, unbearable. I cried out, the sound of my voice echoing down the hospital corridor."
"Every hour now seems to stretch into the longest of my life."
"I feel alone with the ghost of Rachel rattling around the empty house."
"I am waiting for a sign, the slightest shift, the slightest twinge."
"I know they say not to count the days, but what else is there?"
"‘You’re doing really well,’ Daniel said soothingly as I breathed in and out."
"You used to talk about that day often, and we were all forced to listen. And I suppose it was perfect, to you. You just never knew the truth."
"Each other. You didn’t see us on the opposite bank, under the willows. You couldn’t see past the leaves, under the surface."
"At the back of the theatre, after a rehearsal one night. Everyone else had gone home."
"The sound of the rain, the smell of the stage paint. It felt like a revelation."
"When I open my eyes, there is a voice I know. ‘Katie? Katie?’"
"I grip tight, close my eyes. There is a bang, a slam. But the impact I am braced for hasn’t come."
"‘You should have listened, Katie,’ Daniel says again. His expression hardens."
"I feel the wind in my hair. It’s so high, and I can’t let go. I can’t."
"He was grimacing, as if in physical pain, as he holds the hammer up, just above my fingers."
"‘This is your fault, Katie,’ he hisses. ‘I told you. I told you to go home. Didn’t I? But you don’t listen. You never listen.’"
"Nothing about this moment feels real. The smell of the bricks, of the moss in the gutters."
"The cool silence of the air. And then he is back. I see his vacant face, and his hand, a hammer in his hand."
"And deep down, I know the answer is yes. That I have seen it in the pencil lines of his face, in the blankness behind his eyes."
"‘Daniel,’ I cry, ‘don’t do this!’ Daniel’s face is blank, as if he is looking straight through me."
"My stomach collapses in on itself, my breath escapes my lungs. I close my eyes, wait for the slam as my body hits the ground."
"But it doesn’t come, and instead I seem to swing, as if I’m caught."
"And I realise that before I knew my hands had even moved, they have gripped, tightly, around something. The steel rings of the gutter."
"I am here, still here. But my hands are weak, and the metal is hard, and every muscle in my body says let go, I can’t hold on."