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There’s a tremendous weight coming from somewhere, pushing me towards feeling that I’m being short-changed, that there’s something humiliating in my situation. I hate it. I think it’s wrong. I fight it. Because I’m happy, when I don’t think about it in that way.

Women can endure things and keep going because our lives are made up of small practical physical tasks, and no matter how lonely or sad or humiliated you are you do the dishes, or wash the clothes, and you come to the end of a small task and see a small result.

Each time I go to see Three Sisters at Anthill the same thing happens: when Masha makes her confession of love and asks rhetorically, ‘Is it wrong?’ the audience holds its breath. Everyone wants an answer to this question—even perhaps an absolution—but Chekhov won’t give one. There isn’t one. ‘Thes…

Possibilities: this will run its course and subside. He’ll sink back into his married life, its comfort, taking with him whatever he’s learnt from this. But what about me? I tend this seed of fear, water it, want it to sprout.

Rain pours down. Lightning. A huge roll of thunder. He’s telling me about his famous friend in England and his ‘flat-chested, pug-nosed, short-sighted wife, a real sweetheart. She serves him.’ I want to say, ‘Does your wife serve you?’—not meanly, but because I need to know. I’m afraid that if she …