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My REALITY THIS WINTER CONSISTS OF MANY THINGS. EVEN this: I wake from a doze. My flight is approaching a city. The sun vanishes behind tall mountains. Far below, lights go on in thousands of windows and street advertisements. For a moment I don’t remember where I am going. Cities resemble each oth…

I AM SITTING HERE, MY THOUGHTS CARRYING ME AROUND the world and within myself, trying to record the voyage on paper.

I want to write about love—about being a human being— about loneliness—about being a woman.

I want to write about an encounter on an island. A man who changed my life.

I wan…

I offered to go right back and expunge all—or all unfavourable—mentions of him. He looked sceptical. I said it would be a distortion, but that I’d do it if it was necessary. I also offered not to mention him any more, except procedurally. I said it was the first time I’d had to make a decision betw…

In this flat, alone, I can at last see myself as a grown-up. I’ve moved a cane chair into the bedroom so I can survey my view. I sit there in the early evenings and contemplate it. At certain hours it looks almost Italian. One day I’ll be light-hearted again. I swear I will. I will work my way ther…

And I am also learning that there’s a kind of man who believes he can have everything. He thinks he deserves both a wife and a girlfriend, and that everything will be fine and civilised, that he can become ‘really deep, strong friends’ with his wife, once she’s been exhausted by the struggle and dr…