David Nicholls

A Novel

Beth Bartholomew

“I realise that this sounds like I'm putting on a brave face, but we make too big a deal about being alone. People aren't meant to spend their whole adult lives with one other person. In fact, very few do. Well, very few, but your parents, mine, they're not the majority. And lots of people live without a life partner. I don’t know why this perfectly common thing’s thought of as odd or sad.•

karina

“I suppose the main thing I feel now, and I want you to remember I’ve had a drink or two, is that I would have liked to love someone. You know, mutually, and for a period of time, and at that time of life, when you’ve got so much of it. Love, not salmon. I think I’d have been good at it.”

The trick is to change the way you think about time. It's no use thinking in minutes or hours or days, or even generations. You've got to adjust the scale, think in terms of millennia. Then everything you see here is temporary, the lakes, rivers, moun-tains, all in motion, the changes taking place over millions of years. This valley wasn't always here: it was created, gouged out by a great glacier, because ice is a moving thing [...] volcanoes, here, volcanoes, can you believe it?

The point is to remember that the process doesn't stop just because humans are here. It's happening now and it'll happen when the last human is long gone. Mighty forces beneath your feet. Nothing permanent, everything changing.

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