The Cuckoo's Calling

render her vulnerable;

While his short-term prospects were immeasurably improved, the outlook remained uncertain.

that he was buckling under the responsibility of it, the demands it made, the appeals it attracted, the decisions it entailed; that he was much more overawed than glad.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things

Virgil, Georgics, Book 2

How easy it was to capitalise on a person’s own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.

There was an air of joylessness in every news report he watched. The national debt was so huge that it was difficult to comprehend

I’m happy where I am. I just want to get on with work and be on my own for a bit

her secure place of retreat in the cloistered world in which she had grown up, whose values she simultaneously despised and espoused

if you don’t mind me speaking frankly

That’s not how I’d have phrased it, but bluntly, yes