One Small Mistake Quotes
"I always thought of a gaze as hot, two cigarette ends burning into your skin, but his is icy, the tips of two knife-sharp blades pressing against my spine."
"You sit at this table, order a hot drink and you write. You’re born to write, Elodie. This marketing job is slowly killing you."
"I don’t want to die having never done what I love."
"Getting published isn’t as easy as marrying rich."
"Sometimes I think he operates on a different plane to the rest of us mere mortals."
"You need to think about why you’re doing it. About why you started writing in the first place."
"You’re talented and ambitious and brave."
"Everything I have ever wanted lies between us, so close I can taste it."
"I feel like a peach. You know, one that’s been flung off the top of a fifty-storey building and splattered on the hot tarmac in a mess of insides and fluids."
"I am the-world-is-still-my-oyster Elodie."
"The smell of garlic, tomato and chopped basil makes my mouth water."
"Everything is possible and as long as she keeps saying this to herself, she can get out of bed each day."
"‘Of course you’re stressed – some weirdo is following you around everywhere.'"
"‘I’m not convinced I want kids. I mean, I like my vagina the way it is. You know, separate from my anus.'"
"‘I’m sorry.’ He rests his forehead against mine so all I can see is the blue of his eyes, and I know what I have to do."
"‘This is what people do to animals. This is what people do to other people.'"
"‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Great. Everything is just so great.’"
"‘I’ve never forgotten him. Forgotten I used to go to his parents’ house when his mum was working late, and we’d get halfway naked, kissing until we were both raw and exhausted.'"
"‘If you see the guy, give me the signal we discussed.'"
"I saw the way Richard looked at her and, well, it wasn’t very gentlemanly of him."
"Ellie-Bee, you will come home. I promise."
"Missing Ethan in that moment, I wished he was here, his arms around me."
"You always think there’s more time. Another afternoon, another text, another family party, another quiet moment in my kitchen."
"The crowd parted but the commotion drew your stalker’s attention away from the drifting lanterns."
"I never told you that, did I? Why didn’t I ever tell you that?"
"This isn’t some fucking event for you to organise."
"You don’t rent. You own. What’s the problem?"
"Sometimes I think Ethan has only two settings: on his phone or trying to impregnate me."
"I have never trusted Jack. He has two faces and I think I am the only person he’s taken off the mask for."
"You must stick to some very strict rules: you must not be too thin or too fat."
"For a moment, I forgot you were missing, and it felt so good."
"I’m with someone incredible now. I’d never have found Lucas if Simon hadn’t left."
"You can’t live your life for other people."
"If you’re a bad mother, it’s not like you can return the child. It’s not a dress from Whistles."
"You are more important to their partner than offspring which don’t yet exist."
"Nothing gets me wetter than a man with a hoover in his hand."
"A marriage is a contract. Of course, it’s a fucking deal."
"We can’t live our lives for other people."
"It’s okay if you don’t want children, Ada. Motherhood isn’t a preference for everyone."
"Since then, whenever he’s forgotten an anniversary or cancelled plans for work, he apologises with his signature dish."
"Ethan doesn’t like conflict; he erases it like a shaken-up Etch A Sketch and replaces it with a luxurious gesture."
"Sometimes I hate my husband and wonder what the fuck happened to the man I fell in love with."
"Autumn seems to have happened overnight; the trees are bursts of orange, red and mustard."
"I’ve only been to his a few times for family parties and such, but it’s enough to know that his garage was reserved for Jeffrey’s vintage cars, and if Jack owned a bike, it was bound to be in his shed."
"‘You did, didn’t you?’ I pressed. He didn’t answer. He turned and started browsing the products as though I wasn’t even there."
"‘What if we found proof David and Jack do know each other?’"
"I imagine myself wilting like a flower deprived of sunlight, pieces of me shrivelling up and falling off."
"‘I’ll get your fucking cat.’ He opens the door. I do not move. ‘Piss me off again and I’ll kill it.’"
"I destroy it all. Everything Jack has given me to make this prison feel like home."
"I think of Florence in the weighted mournful silence of the funeral where she wore a darkly glittering dress of tragedy, sadness and loss, of which I am the unknowing seamstress."
"‘At first? I never liked him. It was an act, Fray. I knew if I didn’t at least appear to get on with him, I’d lose you.’"
"‘No.’ His hand around my throat squeezes. ‘You need to hear this, Elodie, because I want you to love every dark corner of me just as I love every dark corner of you.’"
"The air smelled of sex and sweat. I looked down, brushing imaginary snowflakes from my coat so he can’t see the disgust on my face."
"Then I remind myself that even if I’d insisted I didn’t want to go along with his plan, Jack would’ve taken me to the cottage by force."
"‘You’re addicted to misery. If you spent less time focusing on where you are and more time focusing on who you’re with, we could both be happy. You know me, you know what I want, what I’ve always wanted.’"
"‘Just as I love every dark corner of you.’"
"I take a breath. I know it shouldn’t matter what other people think, but Ruby and I have been talking about babies for years: trips to the park, joint family holidays at a Cornwall cottage just like we used to do with the Westwoods at Wisteria, watching our children in their first nativity."
"Why is it no one ever asks a woman why she does want children, but everyone’s keen to ask a woman why she doesn’t want them?"
"I picture motherhood, I see snotty noses and dirty nappies and a screaming, red-faced baby, and I simply don’t feel that pull so many of my friends talk about."
"I don’t think I’d have done it without Harriett reassuring me I’m brighter than I think or without Christopher telling me how capable I am."
"You’ll love it when it arrives. Being a mother is unlike anything else in the world."
"Your disappearance had changed me in more ways than I realised."
"I think it’s easy for a man to tell a woman she should have children, especially when he’s not the one who has to give birth."
"It’s your fingerprints on the knife that killed her."
"Lies are easier to swallow when they’re wrapped in truth."
"I can’t choose whether I’ll live. It’s too late for that now. But I can choose how I die."
"You wanted a love that burns. That consumes. Something exciting, unpredictable. Maybe even a little dangerous. Well, here it fucking is."
"For the first time in our entire relationship, in these thorny, dark months, I have the power and I am drunk on it."
"I sit with my grief and my love and my hate for only a second before carefully, reluctantly, lowering his hand to his chest."
"May the wings of your eyeliner always be even."
"He was not just a murderer. Not just my captor. It is not just black and white. It is grey because Jack was not a cartoon villain."
"I still dream of him … we are children racing down the hill towards the small beach and plunging into the sea, shrieking against the slap of cold water."
"I didn’t need a love that burns. That consumes. That blisters and melts the skin from my bones. I needed this. The love I have with my family. My friends. My living, laughing, breathing sister."