He was twenty-seven and I was twenty-one when we got married. That probably seems ancient to you but it’s young much too young Dai Davies was my first real boyfriend. I'd known a few boys in Plymouth, but they were just boys. And the first three years Td been in Bristol Td locked myself away with my books. So what did I know about the world? I knew a lot about time and change and ethics and beauty — because that’s what philosophy is about — but I didn’t really know the world. I didn’t know about growing up and taking responsibility, about working and managing a home. Td been a student all my life because that was what I was good at and people try always to do the things they’re good at. I’ve put some photos of the wedding in this letter.

Your father was an artist — a painter and a sculptor — and I suppose he was trying to do the things he was good at. So he didn’t know much about life either. I realise that now but I didn’t realise it then. What must we have looked like? He had a flat in Clifton, off Pembroke Road. It was a beautiful flat, two bedrooms, with skylights and long sash windows. He needed light for his work and one of the bedrooms was his studio. I thought that the flat was his and he didn’t tell me that it belonged to a friend of his who had gone abroad. Just as he didn’t tell me that the car wasn’t his until his friend sold it. These things may not mean much to you now but maybe when you’re older you’ll understand. Basically, he let me think he was different from the way he really was for so long that by the time I knew what he was like I didn’t care because I loved him. Do you understand? By the time Td worked out that he wasn’t who I thought he was, or, rather, that he wasn’t the kind of person I thought he was, it didn’t matter because I loved him. I did love him. Never think that your parents didn’t love each other because they did.

Once we were married Dai had to move out of the Clifton flat and we rented a place in Redland. But it was a basement flat, small and damp. Because it was a basement there was hardly any light, it was dark and dingy. I was still a student, working towards my Ph.D., which I thought I could manage in three years. But I had to get an evening job to pay the rent and bills, to buy food. Dai worked during the day in a shop and worked in the evenings in a family restaurant at the top of Blackboy Hill So, of course, we didn’t see much of each other and when you don’t see much of someone you can drift apart. I tried to study during the day and went to work at six o’clock. We had money problems — the problem being we didn’t have any — so I stopped studying hard and worked days as well as evenings. By the time I got home, at eleven, Dai was out with friends. I was so tired that I was asleep when he got home.