But I didn’t buy my house simply because I liked it. I bought it for many reasons — because I thought John deserved it, because I had to move away from the cottage, because I wanted to sit on the deck and grow old looking over the sea. Above all, I bought it because I wanted John to bring home friends to stay. It never occurred to me that he would have none.

I sit here in the kitchen, warming myself by the old ivory Aga, hear it clicking behind me, and pour myself another whisky. The dogs pad over to me and flop by my feet, missing Ellen. As I do. Ellen is dying.

4 January 1973

When John began to howl I was in the garden and I dropped everything and ran up the stairs to find him in his bedroom, by the wash-basin, holding my wedding photographs. The noise he made was terrible. Eventually I coaxed him back to his bed and he lay there crying for hours. I stayed with him all afternoon, stroking his forehead. Will this never fucking end? I just want my son to stop hurting and start living.

18 November 1999

Ellen was bad today — so tired she couldn’t speak, so tired she grimaced when I walked in. I didn’t read to her. I sat and looked at her, memorising her face. There is no one except John whom I have loved as I have loved her. Not even Miles — perhaps especially not Miles.

I have seen the world, or as much of it as I wish to, with Ellen. I’ve looked up from the Boston Globe, Die Zeit, the LA Times, the South China Morning Post, Le Monde, to see Ellen frowning as she blows the heat from her coffee, pen tapping the table, pondering thirteen across. We’ve sat on Isola San Giulio in Lago Orta eating pasta, our heads ringing with memories of the Monte Sacro of St Francis. We’ve sipped coffee on the Lido, argued on the steps of the Met, walked the streets of Paris on Christmas Day in an empty city, wondering at its beauty. We’ve sat in a beach bar in Zanzibar, watching coachloads of Italians spilling out into the African sun, made angry and garrulous by inconvenience. We’ve shared beds, shared rooms, shared baths, driven across Death Valley, yelled and shouted at each other, lolled in Jacuzzis on the edge of Route 66, swilling Buds and dreaming of Kerouac. We’ve attempted to camp in Grand Canyon National Park, where the ground was like concrete and the tent pegs curled like Turkish slippers when we hammered them. She threw down the mallet, roared, 'Fuck this!’ - causing earnest American parents to cover children’s ears and shake their heads — and booked us into a hotel. We left before dawn and drove back to the canyon, where we stood alone, leaning on the steel railing as the sun rolled like pale butter across the horizon. Ellen turned to me and smiled, the light gentling her square, handsome, determined face. That is how I shall remember her.