So what do you think, Nick? Because now, in the end, I can admit that all of this is addressed to you. I’m speaking to you day in and day out, and I’m trying to tell you why I did what I did, because I don’t think that drug was ever in my blood, and I don’t know if you were truly guilty of anything except trying to make it through in the way that we have to now. And I miss you and I’m sorry. Just so, so sorry. It’s not all going to work out for the best.

I watched our house burn. I would never have thought it possible that bricks and wood could take so long to burn to the ground. But there it was, for hours alight in the smog.

Oh, Nick, you once laughed at how badly I wrote for an English teacher. And you were right: I could write a thousand pages, but it wouldn’t say anything more. It couldn’t. And it still wouldn’t be a grain of sand in comparison to what I want to say. So all I can tell you is that every minute of every hour I stare out the window and dream of going back and starting again. And that’s all there is. All of it.

Except for Hazel. Yes, Hazel. Officially, she’s over there until the end of her education and then she has to return, but that’s hardly likely, is it? It’s part of a new era of rapprochement with the DUK. ‘Mutual acceptance of our different ways of life and an end to the destructive mistrust that has so long blighted our futures,’ Blunt said on the radio yesterday. His tone was different in that address – more open to question. We’re all reading so much into the speech, endlessly discussing it in hushed voices. Hazel even thinks it won’t be long before I can visit her for a while. Perhaps. Things will need to change a great deal for that to happen. But things do change. And we have a glimmer of it now so let’s just hold on to that.