The urge to say something about the girl grew but fell away, and in the end he simply wrote out the receipt she asked for, and handed it over. - P43
What struck him, too, was the fact that when he was following the nun back from the chapel he‘d noticed a padlock on the inside of the door that led from the orchard through to the front, and that the top of the high wall separating the convent from St Margaret‘s next door was topped with broken glass. And how the nun had locked the front door after her, with the key, just coming out to pay. - P43
"There‘s nothing, only what I‘m telling you,‘ she answered. ‘And in any case, what do such things have to do with us? Aren‘t all our girls well, and minded?‘ - P45
‘If you want to get on in life, there‘s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.‘ - P45
The blow was cheap but it was the first he‘d heard from her, in all their years together. Something small and hard gathered in his throat then which he tried but felt unable to voice or swallow.
In the finish, he could neither swallow it down nor find any words to ease what had come between them. - P46
It‘s only people with no children that can afford to be careless. - P46
Eileen was fast asleep, and for a while he watched over her, feeling the need of her, letting his gaze idle over her bare shoulder, her open, sleeping hands, the soot-black darkness of her hair against the pillowslip. The longing to stay, to reach out and touch her was deep, but he took his shirt and trousers from the chair and dressed in the dark,
without her waking. - P52
She lifted her hair back over her shoulder, and Furlong saw an impression, which was unintended, of her breast, loose, under the cotton. - P54
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