'When the movie people left, the town grew sad. An air of disaster lingered in the stunned streets - of cuckoldry, or grief. There was something shameful to it, like defeated virtue, and also something confidential, because people were so in need of consolation they turned to each other with all their private burdens of ecstasy and despair.'

(the opening of Fiona McFarlane, The Movie People, which is one of my favourite short stories this year.)