I woke where I was; stiff and cold in a high-backed chair. I don’t know if I dreamed but when I opened my eyes I was glad to have left wherever I had just been. I was cold to the marrow. My clothes had dried to my skin and the moisture from them had seeped into my bones. I stripped and wrapped myself in a blanket while I waited for the water to heat up then ran a bath. There was only enough hot water for a couple of inches but it still felt good to ease myself over the lip of the white, wrought-iron tub and scrub the goose pimples from my skin. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and lay with a hot flannel over my eyes until the water began to grow cold. I felt better for it. The towels I used to rub myself dry were rougher than I would have wished but I had not really got the hang of doing the laundry. I brushed my hair for a while, sitting at a dressing table in one of the spare rooms and looking at myself in the burnished surface of an old Victorian mirror. Where had he found all this stuff? Who was it for? Did he know me at all? I tried not to think upon it. My marriage was not meant to be a union of souls. It was an arrangement – a solution. I was grateful to him for all he had done but there were times I felt I would have been better scratching a living by myself than trusting my whole future to the charity of a man who only needed me in his life as camouflage. If I dwelled too long upon such thoughts I grew angry. Angry at myself for being so dependent; angry at my body for making a lie of my promises to Stefan’s father. I hadn’t expected to get pregnant. Hadn’t thought my body could so blatantly disregard my wishes.