The One Plus One

The law of probability combined with the law of large numbers states that to beat the odds, sometimes you have to repeat an event an increasing number of times in order to get you to the outcome you desire. The more you do, the closer you get. Or, as I explain it to Mum, basically, sometimes you just have to keep going.

It was Ed’s mother who had once told him that real friends were the kind where you pick up where you’d left off, whether it be a week since you’d seen each other or two years.

Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.

When Jess had had Tanzie, young and daft as she had been, she’d had enough wisdom to know she was going to tell her how much she loved her every day. She would hug her and wipe her tears and flop with her on the sofa with their legs entwined like spaghetti.

even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay.

It was Ed’s mother who had once told him that real friends were the kind where you pick up where you’d left off, whether it be a week since you’d seen each other or two years

his palm against his chest, wondering if this was what it felt like to have a heart attack. He wondered if he was going to die. What he wanted to do, though, he discovered, was laugh. He wanted to laugh at the magnificence of total strangers. At their kindness and their goodness and the fact that there were actual people out there being good and nice and giving money to people they had never met and never would.

you sealed over. You didn’t need her. You didn’t need anyone. And, without even knowing you were doing it, you waited. You waited for anyone who got close to you to see something they didn’t like in you, something they hadn’t seen initially, and to grow cold and disappear, like so much sea mist, too. Because there had to be something wrong, didn’t there, if even your own mother didn’t really love you?

Because she knew that something happened to you when your mother didn’t hold you close, or tell you all the time that you were the best thing ever, or even notice when you were home: a little part of

She would cocoon her in love. When she was tiny Jess had slept with her in their bed, her arms wrapped around her, so that Marty would haul himself grumpily into the spare room, moaning that there wasn’t any room for him. She barely even heard him.