Lately, he had begun to wonder what mattered,
apart from Eileen and the girls. He was touching forty but didn‘t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of headway and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for. - P33
Not for the first time, Furlong felt that he was poor company for her, that he seldom made a long night shorter. Did she ever imagine how her life would be if she had married another? - P34
At some stage, the need for sleep came over him but he made himself sit on, dozing and waking in the chair, until the hour hand of the clock hit three and a knitting needle, pushed down deep into the heart of the Christmas cake, came out clean. - P35