I found the above only this morning, along with other painful documents, amongst Camilla’s papers. And I was surprised by the effect it had upon me. I like to think that I am sufficiently accustomed to going through her belongings now – I do an hour or two each day – not to be hurt by anything I find; but in fact I am still disconcerted by photographs of her with other men and by the letters – largely illiterate incidentally (she had a taste for unverbal brutes, Camilla) – that they sent her. They are not stab wounds to me any more, but they do pierce me. Like little pin pricks to the heart. Her piece on Hardy, Mrs Henniker and trains, however, is painful to me in another way. It reminds me of when I first read it in its published form, with acknowledgments and footnotes and the swearing left out, as a pamphlet bearing the imprint of the Alternative Centre for Thomas Hardy Studies, Fore Street, Castle Boterel, from which address further information could be obtained about other specialised publications and residential courses for individuals or parties. I picked it up from Blackwell’s on my way from the language school to the railway station, and I read it over and over again on the train back to London. If the train had gone on to Bratislava I wouldn’t have minded – I probably wouldn’t have even noticed, I was so engrossed. Camilla’s pamphlet, you must understand, didn’t just amuse me – it cheered me up, it freed me, it lightened my load, in a manner of speaking it cleared my name. Because if Thomas Hardy could never have been a father then he could never have fathered anyone who could have fathered me. I took Camilla’s word for that completely; it didn’t at all matter to me that what was put forward as proof was but three-quarters supposition; as far as I was concerned no blood test could have been more conclusive. Camilla’s argument had the unmistakable ring of truth: it was witty and acerbic and misanthropic and disdainful. And if you can’t trust acerbity and wit backed up by misanthropy and disdain, what can you trust?