The letter was dated October 23rd, 1926, and had been written to ‘My Darling’ by ‘forever your Edward’. But he wasn’t ‘forever her Edward’ because, according to the letter, he would not be seeing My Darling again. He wrote that he could deceive his wife no longer, and while it broke his heart ‘nevermore to see, hear and hold My Darling’, he felt he had no alternative. There was not only his wife to consider, a good woman who had done nothing to deserve his disloyalty, but there were also his three children, and his ageing mother. My Darling must have doubted his sincerity, given where she had kept the letter and the lines of the poem she had highlighted, but Sylvie had no doubts. She thought ‘forever your Edward’ came across as a self-justifying, self-pitying cheat. She guessed that My Darling was not his first indiscretion, nor would she be his last. In fact, he was probably dismissing My Darling not to make amends with his family, but to make way for My Darling’s replacement. But he would have been found out, of that, Sylvie was sure. And he would have ended up paying for his lies and deceits.

A single letter, and she had become psychologist, priest and storyteller all at once. A single letter, and she was captivated. She had always been drawn to letters — not just the pleasures of receiving them, but the concept of letter-writing, that very particular intimate, secret, and enduring communication. And she thrilled to the covertness of letters, like someone whispering in your ear, your ear and no one else’s.

As exciting as that first letter had been, it would have gone no further if she and Leonard had not decided to replace the flooring in the kitchen. She was pregnant again, and reading Virginia Woolf. (It was more auspicious, she thought, to read a female author during pregnancy, although perhaps better to have chosen one with children.) The plan was to finish the flooring well before the baby arrived. The old lino was the same grey-green monotony that covered so many floors in the 1940s and 1950s. The new lino was very striking: a black background with bright rectangles in primary colours, forming interlocking squares — striking and, compared with other kitchen floors she’d seen, rather daring. The work began with the removal of the old flooring. The underlay comprised the usual newspapers, not from the 1940s or 1950s, but the 1930s.