I screwed up my eyes and concentrated on all the things about my sister that tormented me: she filched my books, underlining the passages she liked with purple ink; she strutted around my bedroom in her silky underthings, displaying her superior bust; sometimes when we fought, she pinched the rolls of my baby fat around my middle between her fingers; and she always looked better in my clothes than I did. No, none of this made me miss her any less—despising my sister was a luxury belonging to the old life. I looked forward with greedy anticipation to the moment when I could hate her again.
“
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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I have thought about that last night a hundred, no, a thousand times since, but I have never written it down before. And I find I like the permanence of the words upon the page. Julian and Anna are cradled safely in my words, caught up in paper dreams. I could leave memory aside and slide into fiction. There is nothing to prevent me from writing them a whole other story, the one I wished for them. But I don’t and I steal away, returning to the clamour of the present, the gardener asking about the geraniums, the postman arriving with a package, and I leave my parents asleep on a cool spring morning on Dorotheegasse long ago.
“
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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Sometimes I feel that it will be a relief to get away from here—from the house, which is, honest to God, falling down about our ears—and away from all the memories. There are so many everywhere that sometimes I choke on them.
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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Photographs are so strange; they are always in the present tense, everyone captured in a moment that will never come again. We take them for posterity, and as the shutter blinks we think of the future versions of ourselves, looking back at this event.
“
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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That Elise, the girl I was then, would declare me old, but she is wrong. I am still she. I am still standing in the kitchen holding the letter, watching the others—and waiting—and knowing that everything must change.
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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On the page we live again, young and unknowing, everything yet to happen.
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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I find I forget more and more nowadays. Nothing very important, as yet. I was talking to somebody just now on the telephone, and as soon as I had replaced the receiver I realised I’d forgotten who it was and what we said. I shall probably remember later when I’m lying in the bath. I’ve forgotten other things too: the names of the birds are no longer on the tip of my tongue and I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t remember where I planted the daffodil bulbs for spring. And yet, as the years wash everything else away, Tyneford remains—a smooth pebble of a memory. Tyneford. Tyneford. As though if I say the name enough I can go back again.
“
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The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
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