[...] I gave him the stories on a Friday so they were in his home for three nights and two days. Lying there somewhere in his house. Absorbing this environment that I could never go to. His Saturdays. His Sundays. Who was he on those days? What clothes did he wear? Where did he sit? Where did he read my stories? Near a long window, on his own, of course. In an armchair but not a big one, not a soft squidgy one, something quite elegant and angled towards the window that might be a door and the garden beyond really was like a jungle, full of vines and brambles, rosehips and elderberries, little birds, apples, pears, old trees and startling ferns. I was with him. I’d done it, I’d crossed over a boundary. I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. I was with him – and he was with me. All weekend I felt him with me, wherever I went, all day and at night. He was with me very strongly when I lay in the dark, it was almost as if I was made of him. Writing could do that. Here was a way of reaching someone, of being with them, when you were not and never could be. Here was where we met. Here was where the distinction between us blurred. When he returned my story to me the following Tuesday the paper was covered with him – touching it was like touching his skin. My fingertips slowly spread out and up the pages. Here and there in pencil he had written comments, brief and encouraging. They meant nothing to me, but I liked to see his handwriting beside mine, sometimes overlapping mine. It was unlined paper. I wrote with a fountain pen. I still do.