[...] When I went back to my children—a long time ago now—the days became heavy again, sex a sporadic and therefore quiet practice, without expectations. Men, even before exchanging a kiss, made it clear to me, with polite conviction, that they had no intention of leaving their wives, or that they had the habits of a bachelor and wouldn’t give them up, or that they ruled out taking responsibility for my life and that of my daughters. I never complained; in fact it seemed to me predictable and therefore reasonable. I had decided that the season of passions was over, three years was enough.

Yet that morning when I stripped the bed where Brenda and her lover had slept, when I opened the windows to get rid of their odor, I had seemed to discover in my body a call for pleasure that had nothing to do with that of my early sexual experiences, at the age of sixteen, with the uncomfortable and unsatisfying sex with my future husband, with our conjugal habits before and especially after the birth of the children. After that encounter with Brenda and her man, new expectations arose. I felt for the first time, like a fist in my chest, that I needed something else, but I felt uneasy saying it to myself, it seemed to me that such thoughts were not appropriate for my situation, for the ambitions of a reasonable and educated woman.