Weird feeling, when I look at a photo of V that I took, that once again he does not exist, I have never met him, I have invented him, he is a FIGMENT. If a long enough silence should fall between us we would forget each other and slip back into our previous lives. Does he exist? No particular emotion accompanies these fancies. In fact it’s a breathing space between bouts of reality. I don’t miss him. How could I miss a flicker, a quick darkness. It would be easier if we never had any further contact with each other, but left each other’s lives alone. He won’t leave his wife, they’ll live out the rest of their lives together, side by side, without passion but with a strong familiarity, used to each other. What’ll I do? I’ll take up piano lessons again, learn to make plants grow, write novels. Summer will come. I’ll grow older. I’ll be happy. If I could be this calm, when we’re apart, then we could live it properly, honour it, without causing smash-up, pain, grief, humiliation. On the other hand, this state seems unreal to me, a kind of nothing state, an interim—or like sleep, or death. ‘First—chill—then stupor—then the letting go—’