For the next few weeks I had to stay in bed because of the bruises and my kneecap. After the first day or two it did not hurt very much, so I had quite a pleasant time. Everyone came to visit me, and brought me presents, and I did not have to do the cooking. I had a much fuller social life than I had hitherto experienced in that ill-fated town: even Sophy came and sat by my bed and ate my grapes and chatted to me about her prospects and about Neville and whether she could afford six guineas for a very nice pair of suede shoes. I was kind to her; now that David was, as I sensed, in the clear, there was no point in being otherwise. I could see once more what I had originally seen: the infinite fragility of her aspirations. I could not help but give her the support and encouragement that she demanded, although at the same time I could see that she and those like her are not in themselves finally fragile, although a woman like me, wanting what they want, would be. But I, being different, and being what I am, am made for survival.

During those weeks in bed, despite my somewhat weakened physical state, I became increasingly aware of my own strength and of what a mistake I had made in trying to relapse into self-pity or the kind of romantic, self-centered indulgence that an affair with Wyndham had promised. These things had been against my nature and against my situation, and I had not been able to go through with them. The truth was that I could survive anything, that I was made of cast iron and that I would have to spend my life not in protecting myself but in protecting others from myself, starting with my children, and continuing with the rest of my acquaintance. Things could come and things could go, but I was never going to have a nervous breakdown: the most they could do to me would be to squash me up against a wall with a big car. I stopped worrying, for those few weeks, though I daresay not for good, about whether I was frigid, or trivial or hard. I just took it that I now was all these things and got on with it. Although the truth is, as I quite well know, that nothing is trivial, there is a providence, as the Bible says, in the fall of a sparrow.