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nothing of substance on them for weeks. She set to work typing out the words from the journal. The going was easy enough for the first few pages, as she knew it would be, but the content of what she was transcribing began to disturb her. Like her grandfather’s letters, it brought unsettling thoughts and images to her mind. Of particular worry were the last few lines of the journal, which, being written in the same clear writing of the first few pages, she’d read before starting her task.
    But action will cause reaction and something will happen. The leaf will be cast to the forest floor where it will lie anonymously turning to mould. Though a million feet were to walk right by it, none would pause to remark its presence. Even I would not be able to detect it. The future at once looks crystal clear and impenetrable. The calmness of the centre has flowed out to envelop me and all around is light and clarity but the horizon remains black and infinite. This I think is the world without her even though she sleeps a sleep through this last night. Check mate in the game. Mr Punch.
    She silently cursed herself for having read the end before she hadread the whole. It had a lyrical quality to it, but it was also dark and sinister. And ‘Mr Punch’? What was that about? Even as she worked on through the first dozen or so entries, she was aware of that final paragraph and resolved to strictly follow the sequence of the writer for the rest of the book. It was certainly more than notes for a novel, perhaps the novel itself. To make the whole thing readable, Lydia added a little punctuation where she felt it was essential, and gave numbers to each section as she detected a change in writing or the colour of the pen, otherwise she was faithful to her source. Where she came to words that defied her attempts at interpretation she left a space or put her best guess in brackets. At length she completed the first dozen or so entries, by far the easiest part of the job. It seemed to her that it would be something more suitable to read from the printed page than the computer screen, so she moved to her comfortable chair with a glass of wine from the previous evening’s bottle. The words were familiar to her, as if she had written them, invented them herself, but nonetheless she began at the beginning, through the strange list of words, the finger exercises, the view from the window, the wide mouthed girl and the odd use of initials to refer to the writer’s wife.
    SDI entered my life at that moment and has been right there ever since. She should not have been, she should never have been, but she is. For how much longer I cannot now say because there is an end to this by some means. She has consumed me and devoured me, borne the child that we lost, transformed me and destroyed me. All this by carrying a cardboard box up some steps to her new flat. It doesn’t seem likely or possible now, writing it down in this dead notebook. Surely it was not me who asked her out for a drink on our first accidental meeting on the stairs a couple of days later for it is something I had only ever done that once. Surely I did not ask her again the next day having been turned down the first time in favour of her favourite TV programme? Surely she did not grudgingly accept the offer? Did she not have a boyfriend or a real life that would take precedence? What her reasoning was for accepting the casual offer I have never known.
    A drink led of course to another and another. And drinks led to meals out and then meals out led to meals in and meals in led to bed. The sheerintensity of that first joining of our bodies still tightens my muscles in a spasm of anguish. And all the subsequent couplings, however rare, however good, bad or indifferent the actual experience, they also force a stifled moan at their recollection. It is not that she was unwilling, just that she never seemed fully engaged, never one hundred percent there with me in the little single bed tucked