I walk back to the cabin rather more slowly than I followed Katie down the lane. The visit is opening up memories and odd thoughts, and I am surprised to find them lying so close to the surface. If I thought in the last few years about the other life at all, it was only in passing, as of something quite vague and different. Now, confronted by Katie and her bitterness and curiosity, I am confronted, too, by a fragment of the old self. I cannot pick out any incident that might be called a memory, but I can see forms, outlines, and it frightens me that they may come back, rushing at me, knocking me off my balance. Suddenly now I feel without confidence, the solidity I have grown accustomed to.

I do not think that I have ever suppressed memory, not at all, even at the beginning of what has become, apparently, nine years. It seemed instead quite natural that all the past should die, as the person who lived it did.

I do not want Katie to come back. I do not want her, bringing that past with her when she walks up my lane. I want her to go back to the city, to do whatever makes her feel content and right. But I do not want her here, questioning my content and my right.

It will not be dark yet for a long time. The light stays in summer until very late, so that long after I eat I can be outside, still warm, working again in the garden or the woods or simply sitting, listening to the life around me. We don’t converse, that life and I, but we recognize each other, and the summer evenings are good.

Later, after dark, if I am not yet tired, I sometimes bake. Usually it’s bread, which is useful. But this night, after I split some wood, which would have been done much earlier if it had not been for Katie, I am still wakeful. Almost tense, I think. I want to make something, not bread but something I don’t need, something frivolous like a cake; and so I do, using too many precious eggs, which means I will run out before the man who brings them to the gate comes round again.

It has been a long time. The cake seems difficult, clumsy to make, messy, and it must be very late when I finish. The cake looks appetizing, appealing, but I am not tempted to eat any now. I do not want to spoil its shape, its symmetry, by cutting into it.

I do not think I made it for Katie. I certainly wasn’t thinking of her when I decided to bake it. But it is there, the next day, when she appears, and when she leaves there are several pieces missing and I am pleased because it seems she has enjoyed it.

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