Anna: One Love, Two Stories

All that was lacking was someone to share her achievements with, someone to hug her in congratulation, a warm body that would bring its own special type of comfort.

She saw them – and herself – as being like the dented tins left last on the shelf, the ones no one really wanted because they didn’t know or care what wonderful things might be contained within.

was carried along like sticks on a river. And it felt horrible.

She was alone, even in a crowd, bent out of shape by what she’d been through, with a deep ache in her chest and a veneer of sadness coating even the most positive of experiences.

She was well used to his effusive outpourings of love and devotion.

Anna’s own eyes were dry; her grief was too huge and too private to be shared with these people she didn’t know.

All these things seemed irrelevant when just remembering to breathe took such a lot of effort. Trying to figure out how to ‘be’ when sadness and exhaustion sapped all her energy was demanding enough.

She followed, letting her hand trail along the wall of the narrow hallway, feeling the dips and bumps of the spongy, flowery wallpaper beneath her fingertips.

whatever this interruption was about, it was nothing good, nothing as frivolous as a monkey in the playground but something far, far more important.

the monkey’s gaze she saw the same sort of sadness and frustration that she saw every time she looked in the mirror and wished she were the type of girl who travelled in a gaggle