Syl didn’t love Margaret. I didn’t care what anybody said. He said he did, but I knew he didn’t. I could tell. That made it easier. Dreaming in the dark, I thought Syl was a mustahàll. When a man divorces you—and all he has to do is say so he can’t marry you again until you’ve married someone else in the meantime. He’s called a mustahàll and everybody is happier if he is either so old or so unattractive as to render the consummation merely technical and not much fun. Oh well.

Oh God, life goes on. On and on. The next day was the day before the wedding. Robert had come back. It may have been because he still did love me really, but I think it was because he was English. It would not have been comme il faut to disappear from the house of his hostess the day before the wedding. I didn’t ask him. I still had my pride. Pooh to you, Robert, with your insults and your Englishness and your cowardice. Whatever else I was, I was brave. When nothing else is left bravery is the only virtue that counts. Ask the mujahedin. Even death is nothing to the brave.

Death would have been preferable to the night before the wedding with Monica’s houseparty. I drank so much whisky it was like committing temporary suicide. I don’t remember much about it in consequence. I have tiny lightning memories of Monica being arch. She had asked Money Bags to come and stay. That was mad if you like. She’d done it to prove to Cynthia that she had an admirer. He didn’t admire her at all but Cynthia didn’t notice. She didn’t notice anything, wrapped up as she was in Cain and Abel. Mrs Monro brought the dog and I think I may have trodden on him. I heard him yelp. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything any more. I sat by Margaret and we killed a bottle of whisky.

When they come to guillotine you they say: ‘The time has come to be brave.’ When they’re about to embark on the jihad they give you hashish. It was the day of the wedding.

I put on my wedding clothes; my crimson redingote and shoes and my little Turkish hat and I went to the summerhouse, and I tied the flowers I had made from the hats of Cain and Abel to the nasty cactus and I made my peace with God. Inshallah...And I had given my word.

‘Oh darling, oh my heart,’ I said, dancing in the dining room. ‘It’s out.’

‘What’s out?’ asked Monica.