When Monica left I went into the sitting-room and sat down. The dog was looking at me, lying with paws outstretched, his eyes filmed and bulging. Syl had brought him for me when Jack died, so he was an old dog now. I hadn’t wanted a dog, especially not a small, peculiar pug, but Syl’s fiancée’s bitch had just had a litter and Syl had thought a puppy would be company for me. He had fully intended marrying the girl, although no date had been set, and his father’s death had come at an inconvenient time. How could he marry when his mother had just been widowed? He and the girl came with the puppy and a mushroom basket for it to sleep in until we made more permanent arrangements. That particular girl was, in my view, too sweet to be wholesome. She would look at me with brimming eyes, rather like the dog, and bring me exasperating posies from her mother’s garden—little bits of flowers and leaf and twig tied up with shiny ribbon, She would catch my eye with her brimming one and glare into it with deep compassion. I used to long to say how pleasant a change it was to be widowed, and watch her expression alter, but I had learned over many years to be guarded and to control my inclinations. Besides, Syl seemed fond of her. He fussed around her, as though she were made of porcelain, and it was already high time he was married, being well into his thirties.

Time: it seemed I could think of nothing else. So much had passed, and still it flew. It must be running out for me, but I went on, seemingly indestructible: a little bored but not unbearably so. I began thinking more and more about the past, and had to make an effort to return to the present. I would come back from the moors of my youth still feeling the wind in my hair and catch a glimpse of an old woman in the darkened windows. Looking in the mirror I could see no trace of the girl whose life I had been reliving. Old age seemed to me not so much a natural progression as a disguise: a suit of unsuitable clothes, ill-fitting and inappropriate. I fell into the habit of sadness and gave up the practice of hope. It made existence easier.