'I remember that time travelling down on the Cathedrals Express in the middle of winter, my hands freezing as I tried to clear the windows of condensation to look at the white, still countryside. No heating was on. I’d sat as long as I could, hunched into my coat, the door of the compartment continually being opened and shut by people walking along the corridor and looking in, hoping for a warmer carriage, and then I heard a voice say it would be warmer nearer the engine. So I followed out into the corridor, pushing my way through people going in each direction, standing stamping their feet, curling their palms hopefully round cigarettes.' (Introduction) 

'When Bob and Helen moved into the house, Helen probably said something like, ‘How terrible to have such a big house for only two people.’ She would have meant nothing by it, would have felt no unease that in the village there were seven children to a bedroom, and here there were seven bedrooms to each of them, or something almost as ridiculous. She would have meant nothing by it except how wonderful it is to have a huge house; just as her father had used to say how terrible it was that his Jaguar did only twelve miles to the gallon. And at the same time she would have smiled secretly and knowingly to herself – something she had done even before she was pregnant – that soon there would not just be the two of them. Bob rather shambled. He was tall and quite broad-shouldered, but he would lower his head slightly as he walked, and his hair was repeatedly matted and ruffled. He was always running his hands through it in perplexity at some problem – at where to drink next, at how to explain a smashed rear light, at how to bandage a cut leg after falling over a concrete mixer outside a pub. The problem now was how to paint the house, with all its rooms, all grubby.' (Introduction)