My brain has numbed. I cannot conjure any words.

Walter stumbles on, as if trying to fill the silence. ‘She’s the sort of girl my parents would want me to marry, even if all of this…’

I spring away from him, anger surging, sudden and unexpected, through my body.

‘Don’t imagine for a single second this is easy!’ Walter says fiercely, grabbing both my hands. ‘In addition to leaving you, and having to marry someone I have no interest in marrying, I have to leave my parents behind – and to what sort of future? This is tearing me apart, Hetty. I told them I wouldn’t go, that I’d stay and see things through here, but my parents won’t hear of it. The fact I have a chance of a new life is all that is keeping them going.’ Tears flow freely down his cheeks. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a man cry.

I nod, a lump forming in my throat, and I close my hand around his. We’ve always been doomed, us two.

‘I love you, Hetty. I always will. But it seems “we” could never be. Not properly. Not here.’

‘I’ve had these stupid daydreams,’ I say, ‘that one day, somehow, some way, we can be together. Live in another country, far from here, where nobody cares who or what we are. But now…’

‘I know.’

My nose begins to run and he hands me his handkerchief. I wipe my eyes and nose and put it into my pocket. Something of his to keep.

‘How soon?’

‘Nothing is fixed. I have no visa yet from the British, nor any permission to leave here because we have to pay the damned exit tax, and we don’t have any money, so honestly, I don’t know. But it could be as soon as a few weeks. Let’s try and see each other as often as we can until then.’

I stare at him through the wash of my tears, trying to absorb all he has said.

‘But everything’s changed now.’ The enormity of it finally hits. ‘You’re getting married to another girl!’

‘She will never know about us.’

Something collapses, folds in. A silent scream.

He pulls me towards him. ‘I am so very sorry. If it could be any other way, you know I would change it.’

‘But we can’t let this continue, can we?’ I push him away, slap his chest. I want to yell at him. Hit him. Make him feel my pain. ‘It’s better we stop it now.’

I stand in a rush and back away.

‘Is that really what you want?’

He comes towards me, tries to take me in his arms, but I fight to be free.

‘No, Walter, of course not. None of it is. But it has to be, doesn’t it?’ I’m trying to hold the pieces of myself together. ‘I have to go! Good luck with your new life in England. And good luck with Anna.’

‘Hetty – this isn’t fair!’