"So I was, yesterday. To-day isn't yesterday, Mummy."
"If John--John was asked to a beautiful party he wouldn't be afraid to go."
As soon as Michael's under lip had stopped shaking his eyelids began. You couldn't stop your eyelids.
"It's not afraid, exactly," he said.
"What is it, then?"
"It's sort--sort of forgetting things."
"What things?"
"I don't know, Mummy. I think--it's pieces of me that I want to remember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once--like I do now."
She loved his strange thoughts as she loved his strange beauty, his reddish yellow hair, his light hazel eyes that were not hers and not Anthony's.
"What will you do, sweetheart, all afternoon, without Nicky and Dorothy and Mary-Nanna?"