Anthony Havelock-Allan

It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading.

This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There'll come a time in the future when I shan't mind about this anymore, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don't want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days.

Fred, dear Fred. There's so much that I want to say to you. You're the only one in the world with enough wisdom and gentleness to understand. If only it was somebody else's story and not mine. As it is, you're the only one in the world that I can never tell. Never never. Because even if I waited until we were old, old people and told you then, you'd be bound to look back over the years and be hurt. And my dear, I don't want you to be hurt. You see, we're a happily married couple and let's never forget that. This is my home. You're my husband. And my children are upstairs in bed. I'm a happily married woman - or I was, rather, until a few weeks ago. This is my whole world, and it's enough, or rather, it was until a few weeks ago. But, oh, Fred, I've been so foolish. I've fallen in love. I'm an ordinary woman. I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.

I had no thoughts at all, only an overwhelming desire not to feel anything ever again.

I imagined him holding me in his arms. I imagined being with him in all sorts of glamorous circumstances. It was one of those absurd fantasies, just like one has when one is a girl being wooed and married by the idea of ones dreams.

I wish you'd stop talking. I wish you'd stop prying and trying to find things out. I wish you were dead - no I don't mean that. That was silly and unkind. But I wish you'd stop talking.

Isn't it awful about people meaning to be kind?

Do you know, I believe we should all behave quite differently if we lived in a warm, sunny climate all the time. We shouldn't be so withdrawn and shy and difficult.

Yes it has. I don't want to pretend anything either to you or to anyone else. But from now on, I shall have to. That's what's wrong. Don't you see? That's what spoils everything. That's why we must stop, here and now, talking like this. We're neither of us free to love each other. There's too much in the way. There's still time, if we control ourselves and behave like sensible human beings. There's still time.

That week was misery. I went through it in a sort of trance. How odd of you not to have noticed that you were living with a stranger in the house.

I had no premonitions. But, I suppose I should have had. It all seemed so natural and so innocent.

It seems an eternity since that train went out of the station, taking him away, into the darkness. I was happy then.

I starred out of that railway carriage window into the dark and watched the deem trees and the telegraph posts slipping by. And through them I saw Alec and me. Alec and me, perhaps a little younger than we are now, but just as much in love and we have nothing in the way. I saw us in Paris, in a box at the opera. The orchestra was tuning up. Then we were in Venice, drifting along the Grand Canal in a gondola with the sound of mandolins coming to us over the water. I saw us traveling far away together. All the places I've always longed to go. I saw us leaning on the rail of a ship, looking at the sea and stars. Standing on a tropical beach, in the moonlight, with the palm trees sighing above us. Then the palm trees changed into those pallided willows by the canal, just before the level crossing. And all the silly dreams disappeared. And I got out at Ketchworth and gave up my ticket and walked home as usual. Quite soberly and without wings. Without any wings at all.

Having committed the crime, I suddenly felt reckless and gay.

We had such fun. I felt gay and happy and sort of released.

I felt suddenly quite wildly happy.

We were very gay during lunch and talked about quite ordinary things.

How can I possibly say that? "Don't hurry, I'm perfectly happy." If only it were true. Not I suppose that anybody's perfectly happy, really. But, just to be ordinarily contented. To be at peace.

I looked hurriedly around the carriage to see if anyone was looking at me - as if they could read my secret thoughts. No one was. Except a clergyman in the opposite corner. I felt myself blushing.

I went into the high street and found a tobacconist and telephoned you. Do you remember?

I walked for a long while. Finally, I found myself at the war memorial. You know, it's right at the other side of town. It'd stopped raining all together and I felt stiflingly hot. So, I sat down on one of the seats. There was nobody about and I lit a cigarette. I know how you disapprove of women smoking in the street. I do too, really, but - I wanted to calm my nerves and I thought it might help.