Kate Morton

A Novel

Homecoming

Gemma McCarthy

It would be a celebration of ubiquity of stories and all those unseen parallels that threaded together to form the framework of our lives. How many points of interest there must be - some small and intimate, others more exceptional - hiding in the dusty stairwells of the city

Jess had been that young girl once, twenty years before. She knew about the excitement on the other side of the gate; the first taste of real freedom, the thrilling sense of being, at last, in control of one's own destiny.

'Someone I used to know a long time ago told me once that fear is the doorway to opportunity…’

Jess's first reaction was embarrassment at having entered the wrong room. This frail old woman with skin so thin i was transparent could not be Nora. Nora was full of life: when she entered a room, people turned to see what had just happened. This person, this imposter, took up no space at all; her body was so tiny, her face in repose so old. 

She wished she d brought a book. Ordınarily, she didn't go anywhere without one.

Words, Jess had observed, could be as tricky as people: seeming to say one thing, when all the while another, secret meaning lay beneath the surface.

 No longer a stranger, she was a woman with a favourite teacup. A transplant to a different country, something Jess well understood: belonging, but never quite fully, while another place, far, far away, maintained a stubborn claim as ‘home'.

Jess's denial of their shared moment made Polly feel, in that moment, completely alone in the world.

Home, she'd realised, wasn't a place or a time or a person, though it could be any and all of those things; home was a feeling, a sense of being complete. The opposite of ‘home' wasn't 'away', it was ‘lonely'

“Are you with me?” Polly was searching Jess's face, waiting tor an answer. Jess gave a nod and smiled. “I am.”

Homecoming quotes

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