I took another step towards him. Still he did not turn, although I was close enough for him to hear my breathing now. What is it about us – women I mean – that we are so tender when men drop their guard just for a moment and let their capacity for weakness show? Is it some deeply imprinted desire to mother? Or is it simply that it feels like such a relief, to get a glimpse of their susceptibility and to know that in that moment the tables are turned? Looking down at Matthew and seeing the young him and the old him together at once, I was filled with the desire to kneel down behind him and take him in my arms, to wrap my arms around his chest from behind and rest the side of my head against the side of his and rock him, comfort him. Perhaps he would cry a little, then, and turn to me. Perhaps it was all going to be okay.

This might have happened. But before it could happen, he spoke. He stayed motionless but his voice was clear in the darkness. It was plain, and cold.

‘I’m not good for you.’

There was something about the simplicity with which he spoke: no games, no provocations, just a simple fact. The truth of it made me feel gripped by fear, a sensation as real and as physical as if someone was squeezing my heart in their fist. I did not know what to say. If I agreed with him it meant the end of our relationship, there and then, yet any contradiction of what he said would be a lie and we both knew it. As I stood there, trapped in that moment, I could not even explain my own fear to myself, the heat that rose to my face – for it was more than fear, of course, it was foresight. I knew that whatever happened between Matthew Goodison and me from now on, it was going to end and end badly. There was no way out of this that would not entail unpleasantness – it was just a question of what form it would take and how bad it would be.

I stood there for a long time. He sat in silence, his back to me, looking out over the garden. Outside, there was nothing, no sound and no movement, only darkness – the plain square of grass, the empty benches, the austere and unforgiving night.

PART SIX

18

A woman is asleep in bed. She wakes. Her eyes open but she remains motionless, curled on her side. She is taking a moment or two to absorb the fact that she is conscious, as if acknowledgement of that fact requires so much energy that adding motion would be too monumental an effort.