Harriet Evans

Everyone's allowed to be in love with the wrong person at some point. In fact, it's a mistake not to be.

Elle Remembered Yorkshire road and the flat he shared with Caitlin and their daughter, and she almost stopped and turned back, and then she hardened herself against it. It's his problem if he wants to sleep with someone and he shouldn't, she told herself. It's a one night thing. I'm in the clear. It's sex, nothing else.

WHY did she do this? She was a terrible drunk texter. All the things she wanted to say to people during the day came out at night, like a vampire.

She was different. She liked hearing it, because she wanted to recall just enough of it to remember that she never wanted to go back to being the person she'd been before.

Elle wondered if he had regrets. But she didn't let herself wonder for too long. She had locked her heart up against him, and it would take something extraordinarily strong to break it open.

It's just odd being a guest at the wedding. When you dreamed about it for so long, even if you we're a different person, and it was years ago. Sounds so stupid. I was stupid.

She, who had never liked weddings, had allowed herself this fantasy. Her wedding day to Rory. A pretty church in Sussex, festooned with spring flowers. Rows of relatives, and her, Elle, floating down the aisle in cream silk to 'The arrival of queen Sheba', with eyes only for him... Rory, slightly rumpled, slightly scared, her love, her only one.But that wasn't how it had turned out. She knew she was OK, watching him, in fact she was happy for him, happy for Libby. But she couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the girl she'd been, who'd loved him so much. She was still dreaming somewhere, hoping this day would come.

No, she learned that true love was epic stuff, as told by Mary.

Since being back in London everything seemed greyer, but clearer. She couldn't explain it. The strangest thing was she couldn't recall her New York self. She wanted that part of herself back, but she couldn't remember what it was like to be that Elle. She would catch a whiff of it, like the snatch of a song that still won't lead you to the chorus, and then it would be gone.

The trouble is I'm not very good at trusting my own instincts. I've been wrong before. A lot.""About what? You worry too much, about everything. You're to hard on yourself.""I was wrong about Rory -""You were twenty-five, twenty-six! Everyone's allowed to be in love with the wrong person at some point. In fact, its a mistake not to be.

She had lost him. Lost him because she'd let him go. And she could not allow herself to regret that decision.

She wanted to sit in the pub with him the way Sam did with Steve, the way Matty and Karen had done last weekend with their boyfriends, to hold his hand as they walked down the street, to be able to smile in public at him, not this controlled, agonisingly formal behaviour. It struck her, this week in particular, that she was completely isolated. She couldn't talk to him, she couldn't talk to her friends, and she didn't know when that would change. And she couldn't do anything about it; she was weak, because she loved him too much, not that that was weakness, but - she was powerless.

Not to be with the one you love, Laura, the one person you should be spending your life with--it__ like a kind of living death. To wake up every morning and know you are still here. To have that brief, sweet moment of blankness, before your mind reminds you who you are, and why you are unhappy. It was like hell. A living hell of the heart__ own making.

You don't fall in love with someone because it's convenient.

She didn't want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.

To know yourself is to know where you're from