The House We Called Home. Jenny Oliver

determination she had felt to leave was forever being tempered by propriety, like a game of ping pong, always batted back. But she hoped it was still somewhere deep within her, simmering, because now she was trapped, trapped till the stubborn old fool decided to come back, where she had been poised ready to jump. Ready to soar.

      And her fear was that as time ticked, her children – just their raised brows at her jeans was almost enough – and the comforting pressure of respectability, the omnipresent fear of judgement, of being gossiped about as she had gossiped, of being pitied should she fail, would kill her little sliver of courage, and she’d wake up, boringly, in bed forever.