I was frightened when I first moved into this flat, alone. It is my own. I bought it, with the handout that Andrew gave me as the price of our divorce. Why did I choose this dark, dirty menacing area, this street so unlike any street I have ever inhabited before, even in my imagination? Was is perversity? Was I setting myself a survival test? Was I punishing myself?

I knew I couldn't stay in Suffolk, although most people expected that I would. They didn't think I'd have the initiative to clear off so completely. (I don't think 'clear off' is a very ladylike phrase either - maybe I am losing caste by living here?) But I couldn't face the prospect of hanging around in a country where I might still bump into Andrew and my replacement. His new partner, Anthea Richards, now his bride. However careful I was not to bump into them, I'd still have to hear gossip about them, because Suffolk is a small (or perhaps I mean a thinly populated) county, and people in what was our world did talk about one another all the time. Andrew's second marriage has been newsworthy. I'm sure I would have talked about it myself, had I not been one of the parties. (That's an odd phrase too - 'parties'. Odd how writing things down makes all the phrases I take for granted look slightly off-key.)

Nobody expected Andrew to embark on an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. It wasn't as though she herself was in statu pupillari, but the connection nevertheless seemed more than vaguely unprofessional and improper - as though one or he other of them had taken advantage of the very thing that should have kept them apart.

People's sympathies were divided. I was an honourably loyal and washed-up wife, stranded, useless, ageing, as on a high and dusty kitchen shelf, so people felt sorry for me. But Anthea had twice been tragically bereaved. She had lost her husband, and then her daughter. Tragedy and compassion had brought Andrew and Anthea together. He had been too caring, too kind, and his own goodness had forged the bond between them. So it was seen. I know that's what people saw, and thought, and possibly said - thought maybe they weren't quite crude enough, quite ungentlemanly and unladylike enough to say it. The circumstances of their affair were thought to be romantic rather than squalid and opportunist.