He sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. He didn’t give me one. “You left it in your jeans pocket. I took your jeans to the launderette and when I was clearing out the pockets I found it. Classic, isn’t it? It’s what women are supposed to do when their husbands are unfaithful. I’ve read about it in books.”

“And you read my letter?”

“I did. Dreadful, wasn’t it? You must be very shocked. It’s something to be ashamed of, isn’t it, reading other people’s letters? I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. I opened it and read it. It didn’t give me any pleasure reading it, or any sort of satisfaction. In fact, it made me bloody miserable and bloody angry too.”

“Is that why you’ve been all cold and sulky?” I said.

“What do you think?”

He said he was going to sleep on the sofa. I could have the bed but he’d prefer me not to invite anyone else into it while he was in the flat.

I lay in that bed feeling all sorts of guilt and all sorts of resentment. I wrote nothing in my diary. What I’ve set down here is what I remember. I may not have got every word and every phrase right. How deeply engraved on our concept of what honor ought to be is the principle that however you may deceive and lie, prevaricate and deviate, you must never never read someone else’s letters. Silver had seemed to me the soul of honor. If anyone had asked me what I saw in him, I’d have said I found him attractive, I found him funny and clever and the best company in the world, but first and foremost I loved him for his integrity. What became of that when he had read my private letter?

And I didn’t care for Guy at all. I felt a sort of loyalty to him and a great deal of gratitude but that letter, which implied I was looking for a husband and a home and what I believe is called a meal ticket, had killed the little affection I had. Silver, my calm and laid-back, clever and funny Silver, had been perturbed by that letter? Did that mean he was less than what I had thought and I had been deluded? Or was it that I had no understanding of jealousy? You must understand that I’m asking myself this now, I didn’t ask it then. But I remembered Judy and how I had been afraid of her and I fell asleep feeling less furiously indignant than I had when Silver first left me to spend the night on the sofa.