I'll Never Be Young Again

    Daphne du Maurier

★★★
The narrator of this one... he didn't win all my favour & sympathies. 
The evolution & breakdown of the relationship between Hesta & Dick was interesting to follow, as well as his efforts to step out of his father's shadow.
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I resented the idea that when the Hedwig sailed again there would be some strange Norwegian snoring in my cot..,  for places where we have lived intensely become part of ourselves, I always think. However much now Jake and I might resolve to return.., I felt there would be other things claiming us by then and the Hedwig would belong to the past. 
....   

In a flash I can see the progress of that autumn and the coming of winter. [...]I would go on writing and yet be awae of the life that continued aound me, the comfort and the familiarity of little things. There would be Hesta's book lying open on the floor, and her sweater hanging over the back of a chair. On my table were some flowers she had placed there in the morning... Her things and my things, part o each other, part of our life, and the room next door with the one divan in the corner, and my old coat hung on a hook on top of her mackintosh, my shoes lying untidily under the dressing-table, hers beneath a cahir and our tooth-brushes in a jar, and a sponge we shared. All these making up the atmosphere of Hesta and me.. Scraps of conversation..  
....

He was never wrong. I think he always knew what would happen to me. 

Adventure and excitement, sorrow and love were all phases of my life that had to be.