Anna: One Love, Two Stories

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

This news had been offered so casually, almost as an afterthought, and yet for Anna it was a bright jewel of information that would glow inside her head for ever.

what you eat on your wedding day isn’t really that important. In fact whether you get married or not isn’t really important. The thing that matters most is that you spend your time with someone who loves you very much and who you love right back, someone who is kind to you and who you in return want to be kind to.’