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My computer at St Neot packed up so I had to work at home all day. He actually brought me a coffee.

V: ‘Want me to make you a little snack?’

H: (amazed) ‘Thanks! Yes! I’d like that!’

V: (mimes a flinch, as if put upon)

H: ‘You did offer.’

V: ‘I can do it, if that’s what you’d like.’
…

I said, ‘Look, V. We’re married. We know each other. We know what’s horrible about each other. We don’t subscribe to each other’s myth. And the only way out of being known like that, if you can’t stand it, is to leave and find a new person. For a while they think you’re wonderful and believe in you…

‘All the people who should be told have been told,’ he says. ‘Our friends are bored. They’re sick of hearing about it.’ Turns out he’s been going round telling them that we’ve hit a rocky patch, that I’m unhappy. Puzzled people keep ringing me up: ‘What’s going on?’ In each case, I learn that he ha…

He makes a concession. He offers to rent a place to work. ‘All I need’s a bare cell, whereas what you need is two bedrooms, and it’ll cost a bloody fortune. I could rent a place for six months and see how it goes.’ So staggered I couldn’t speak. After all these years he is talking about it simply a…

In the sauna with the ship’s doctor. We get naked and talk, red-faced and dripping. She says stress can make your fingernails crack and peel, and your hair fall out. She parted from her husband five years ago. It took them ‘six agonising months’ to break up: ‘I didn’t want to live, at that stage.’ …