‘I know that you were very beautiful.’ He squeezed my hand.

‘But I’m not now.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘No. Not like you were.’

‘Give me the mirror.’

He held it out to me and I took it.

7 May 1973

When I was first wheeled down to John’s hospital room, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d been told what his injuries were but I couldn’t picture them. I was shocked by how thin he was, how long-drawn-out and pale. It wasn’t his scars that shocked me, it was his eyes — they seemed larger, deeper and endlessly restless. I watched his eyes scanning my face and tried not to flinch, managed not to look away. And then he groaned — I’m not sure whether he knew he had — and turned his back on me. I looked at the shiny pink scar tissue heaving along his spine as he cried and I ceased to care about myself - what I looked like, what others thought of me, what my future would be. I probed myself once more and discovered that I had finally hardened to stone.

18 December 1972

I went into Plymouth today to buy sheets for the new beds and I saw this notebook, with its black cardboard cover and spiral binding, and thought I must have it. I’m not sure why I bought it but I’m sitting in what will one day be the library, a fire burning in the grate, and I’ve opened it and begun to write. I can only think that because of the months in hospital spent writing thousands of notes to John I have become used to writing rather than speaking.

So - I went into Plymouth today for the first time since I left John in the hospital. It was the first time I’ve been in a city since the bomb. I know I’ve lived in London for a year but for some reason that doesn’t count. I never minded people seeing my face there, because the whole city seemed like a large hospital ward. Difficult to explain this. But going to Plymouth, to a place where people knew me before, was different. I was so aware of my scars, of passers-by looking at me and looking away only to glance again, slyly, eyes sliding. What can I do? Wear a veil? Take me to a nunnery?

My journal is christened.

19 December 1972

Today I had to go to Noss Mayo, to the old cottage, to hand over the keys. It’s the first time I’ve been back there since that morning more than year ago when we left for London. I opened the front door, which was speckled with the dry dust of winter storms, and stepped into the hall where I had stood so many times as policemen tried to ask me out. There were papers and envelopes stacked on the hall table, yellowed with age. Everything was dulled by dust and spiders’ webs. I climbed the stairs to John’s room and sat on his bed. As he had told Harry, his room is full of shells, covering every shelf and table top. Cowries, conches, limpets and scorpion shells, and stiff, pale red, weightless starfish. Driftwood covered in barnacles, smooth grey pebbles and dull cubes of ivory quartz with rusty veins running through them. Hanging on the wall is the weathered plank of a long-forgotten dinghy, with its name, Merboy, faded but still visible.