When you’ve loved somebody for a long time, and then it stops, it’s akin to an amputation in that you go on feeling the cut-off part long after it’s been taken away. All sorts of nervous and emotional impulses set out to travel to their accustomed stations, and when they come up against the new, raw barrier, they’re carried through it by their own impetus, and only then, finding themselves shooting through empty space, do they dwindle and die away.

Author: Lynne Reid Banks