“Ah! Either way, then, let us—you and me, no other Swede allowed, even on paper—enjoy ourselves this night.”

Hazzley slipped into a robe in the bathroom, tried not to examine herself in the mirror, changed her mind, saw that this was a slimming mirror, a flattery mirror, and realized that the body she was looking at was the one she used to own. It’s okay, she said to the mirror. I’m not fooling myself. But it doesn’t hurt to look at what used to be. She removed her watch from her wrist, stowed it in her cosmetic case and wondered what to expect. Hazzley, she told herself, you don’t have to be passive about this.

Meiner’s body weight sank into the mattress and she rolled toward him. That was the beginning of the pattern that unfolded each night they were in Toronto. Meiner sent word to his prairie relatives and altered his dates, extending his hotel reservation to match hers. Three years later, Hazzley had to ask herself if the encounter had truly happened. Sex with Meiner was the only sex she’d had outside of marriage, and it was also the most satisfying she’d ever had. Or had she forgotten sex with Lew? Either way, Meiner caressed her, loved her—made her laugh. He smelled of a soap she could not identify, not perfumed, not unpleasant. That first night, after making love, they sat in bed, propped by pillows, and finished off every drop of the champagne. They talked and talked and talked. Were they both starved for conversation? Meiner told her he adored her spirit. He told her how certain he was that sex and life experience added up to the best combination. They slept in each other’s arms, one of Meiner’s heavy legs slung over both of hers. When they awoke in the morning, facing each other across hotel pillows, he said, “Herregud! Look where we are!” They laughed and made love all over again.

At the end of their time together, with no feeling of remorse or regret on Hazzley’s part, they said goodbye. Hazzley did not ask herself: What have I done? There was no inquisitor around to examine her behaviour.

Would she and Meiner get together again? Maybe, maybe not. Since that time, they had exchanged an occasional friendly email, but they did live on different continents.

After meeting Meiner, feeling alive again, fully reminded that she was a sensuous human being, she returned to Lew. During the train journey home, over coffee and an unappetizing croissant that was squashed flat in its cellophane packaging, she looked out the window at the dregs of Canadian Shield and considered how life was so much more complicated than one could ever imagine in childhood. Just as well; otherwise, no one would want to grow up. Her childhood had begun during the war. She was a war baby and might not have survived. She remembered—or thought she did—the outrageously loud noises outside her London home, her mother’s steadying voice within the terrifying darkness of an underground shelter. And then she was sent away to the country, to a stranger’s home, but she was lonely there. When she returned to London, she remembered that during daylight hours, her mother set pots of fat outside the front door for collection. For grease? For the machinery of war? What else?