Bethan Roberts

Then, realising I am now free to look at him as blatantly as I like, for hours if I want to, I freeze.

I can’t do it. I cannot raise my eyes to him. My heart becomes frantic with the weight of it, this unfettered pleasure that lies ahead.

Charlie occasionally touching Jim’s neck, Jim catching his wrist as he did so. Looking at them, I allowed myself a little fantasy. I could live like this with my policeman. We could spend evenings chatting to friends, sharing a drink, behaving as though we were – well, married.

‘Well. It’s as I said. I’d like to meet her.’

I have no choice, I know that. I can pretend she doesn’t exist and risk losing him altogether, or I can put myself through the ordeal and keep a crumb of him.

‘You drive too fast,’ he observed as we took the coast road out of town.

‘Are you going to arrest me?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘I didn’t think you were the type, that’s all.’

‘Appearances,’ I said, ‘can be deceptive.’

One is never sure, in Venice, what is reality and what reflection, and when seen from the back of a vaporetto, the whole place looks like a mirage, floating in an impossible mist.

I stood in the doorway and watched my husband. His shoulders moved in great heaves, and he let out a series of strange, animal-like groans.

I CONSIDERED STARTING with these words: I no longer want to kill you – because I really don’t – but then decided you would think this far too melodramatic. You’ve always hated melodrama, and I don’t want to upset you now, not in the state you’re in, not at what may be the end of your life.

What I mean to do is this: write it all down, so I can get it right. This is a confession of sorts, and it’s worth getting the details correct. When I am finished, I plan to read this account to you, Patrick, because you can’t answer back any more. And I have been instructed to keep talking to you. Talking, the doctors say, is vital if you are to recover.

Your speech is almost destroyed, and even though you are here in my house, we communicate on paper. When I say on paper, I mean pointing at flashcards. You can’t articulate the words but you can gesture towards your desires: drink, lavatory, sandwich. I know you want these things before your finger reaches the picture, but I let you point anyway, because it is better for you to be independent.

It’s odd, isn’t it, that I’m the one with pen and paper now, writing this – what shall we call it? It’s hardly a journal, not of the type you once kept. Whatever it is, I’m the one writing, while you lie in your bed, watching my every move.

No. I thought it an awful idea, just as you would have done. But Tom was determined to retire to a quieter, smaller, supposedly safer place. I think, in part, he’d had more than enough of being reminded of his old beats, his old busyness. One thing a bungalow in Peacehaven does not do is remind you of the world’s busyness. So here we are, where no one is out on the street before nine thirty in the morning or after nine thirty at night, save a handful of teenagers who smoke outside the pizza place. Here we are in a two-bedroom bungalow (it is not a Swiss chalet, it is not), within easy reach of the bus stop and the Co-op, with a long lawn to look out on and a whirligig washing line and three outdoor buildings (shed, garage, greenhouse)

’ve given this bedroom to you, and have arranged your bed so you may see the glimpse of the sea as much as you like. I’ve given all this to you, Patrick, despite the fact that Tom and I never before had our own view. From your Chichester Terrace flat, complete with Regency finishings, you enjoyed the sea every day.

The dog followed him. You and I sat listening to Tom’s footsteps along the hallway, the rustle as he reached for his coat from the peg, the jangle as he checked in his pocket for his keys; we heard him gently command Walter to wait, and then there was only the sound of the suction of air as he pulled the double-glazed front door open and left the bungalow. When I finally looked at you, your hands, limp on your bony knees, were shaking. Did you think, then, that being in Tom’s home at last might not be all you’d hoped?