Lili now began to call on me quite often. She would come in through the back door, calling ‘Cuck-oo’, stripping off her coat and dropping it at the foot of the stairs. And, do you know, I didn’t mind. I began to half wait, half hope that she would come, smelling of scent and cigarettes and talking of things that other people didn’t talk about. She never mentioned Jack, but after a while I found myself saying his name as I talked of the past. It would have been unnatural not to do so, like describing a recipe and leaving out a mundane but essential ingredient. Of course she had not forgotten the occasion when she had seduced my husband, but she didn’t speak of it, although I would not have been entirely surprised if she had done so. As it was, whenever I said his name she would look straight into my eyes with a smiling, limpid regard and offer me a cigarette. As often as not I would accept it. I did not feel old when Lili was with me because she did not treat me with the strained respect which most people considered appropriate to the elderly. Men who habitually told risqué stories would moderate their language in my presence, rendering themselves even more tiresome, since constraint causes such unease. I used to toy with the idea of uttering some unspeakable word, but such words come as ill from withered lips as from the lips of babies. I don’t know why this should be so. It is probably that the old have undergone more experiences which require such words to describe them than have the young. Perhaps we are meant to have forgotten them all, and, if I am to be honest, perhaps we have. I could not remember the passions that had once filled me—only the broken splinters of phrases that I had used to express them: ‘...don’t leave me. I’ll kill you/myself, I can’t bear it.’ Of the happier moments I could recall almost nothing, not even the words. This was really a mercy, for people who are in love are like people who are out of their minds, and it is best to forget what they say. Passion dies. Even lost poetry has a faded scent to those who entomb dead desire, and everyday words by everyday people attempting to convey their emotions are possibly the most banal in the language. Lili, I was sure, was not at the moment in love. She was far too lively and interesting, discussing everything under the sun, not half-hypnotized by obsession or limp with wondering what the beloved was up to. She said one day—à propos of nothing much—I don’t know what I had said to lead her on:

‘It’s no use anyone asking me about relationships. When I was a little child I was sometimes spoiled, and sometimes locked in my room, and as a result I find it difficult to form relationships.’