Golden Hill

On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the w

It struck him that he’d never been so happy, but was wise enough to understand that his happiness consisted largely of hope. Their meeting in the ruin had been intimate and strange, and had sustained his spirit for days; but quickly they’d reverted to their easy pretence of being boys with a mystery on their hands. So they spoke only of where Maria

Somewhere in Aldleigh James Bower was taking off his tie, and pouring himself a glass of wine – in fact (Thomas smiled at his own foolishness) there was Maria, look, there she was, having clambered out of the shopping trolley and abandoned Dimi on the Lowlands lawn, and wandered down Lower Bridge Road. She leaned against the doorframe admiring the

A man was crossing the vacant floor towards him. The distance between them was so great this took an hour or two, and in that time Thomas felt no anxiety and no surprise: ‘James,’ he said, smiling with an uncompromised happiness he knew would be brief, and taking account of the ways in which the man was altered.