I picked John up this morning from school to come back home for the Christmas holidays. He was so excited that I’d been to a party. I forget that he’s sixteen now and old enough to recognise loneliness when he sees it. Indeed, I fear it’s a too-familiar sight for him. He asked me about the party, and I lied and told him that it was great fun and that I’d talked to lots of old friends. At least it seems that now I’ve finally learned when it’s OK to lie to my son.

25 November 1999

The weather here in the Cotswolds was beautiful this morning — cold but clear, with a thin, low-lying mist. When I went down to the kitchen and looked out of the half-glazed door the mist was floating round the mossy mushroom stones and the valley had drowned. Yet I could see the cows looking up from their grazing to peer over the fog in amazement, leaving loops of grassy breath.

I walked the dogs through the fields, cows looming up suddenly around us, and up to the ridge of the valley opposite. The mist burned away as I walked, and I stopped and looked back to the house. I’ve known it for nearly thirty years yet its beauty still surprises me. Soft, rounded by centuries, the roof covered in a blanket of lumpy moss. After a high wind the paths are covered with blobs of peaty, dark green lumps. By the time I stepped back into the kitchen the sun was dazzling and the drive into Oxford - through Enstone and Woodstock, along tree-lined roads, past the excrescence that is Blenheim — was, for once, a delight.

But when I got to the ward, I found Ellen’s room empty. My mouth went dry, suddenly parched. I stopped a passing nurse, grabbed her arm so hard she nearly dropped a spotless kidney bowl. ‘Where is she? Where’s Ellen Matthiesen?’

‘I’ll get the doctor for you.’ She swivelled on the heels of her sensible black brogues and was gone.

Ellen?

The doctor came, smiling and avuncular, and told me that Ellen was having some tests, that if they were satisfactory she’d be allowed home for a few days. ‘I believe you’ll be there?’

‘Yes.’

He put his hand on my arm, smiled again. ‘It will do her good to be away from here for a while.’

I looked him in the eye, full face, no hiding hand, letting him know that I was, shall we say?, used to the small disappointments that life can throw up. ‘Is she dying?’

‘She’s doing better than any of us expected.’

‘Doctor, that’s not what I asked. I need to know because then I’ll know what to do. How to talk to her. What to say. You see, I haven’t said everything that I want to say, I haven’t told her things I want her to know.’ How much I’ve always loved her, for instance. That she has made my second life bearable.