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I opened any one of them, I might feel differently.
    February 1st, for example. Was that the day when we told each other how we lost our respective virginities? Was February 19th when I told him about the end of my relationship with Steven? I could no longer bear to look. Especially not at the direct messages we had sent each other that day in the library when Marco asked me to open the top left-hand drawer of the desk and I found a small black pebble-shaped vibrator waiting for my pleasure.
    Thinking about that day made me close my eyes tightly to hold back the tears. I thought it had been the start of something. I had been so very wrong. After that day, everything seemed to fall apart.
    I closed the Marco file. I hovered the cursor over it, ready to drag it into the trash can in the corner of the screen. It would have been so easy to leave it for another day but something in me wanted to make a definitive move right then. I dragged the file to the dustbin icon and quickly clicked on ‘empty trash’ so that there was no way I could go back and reinstate the files later. I felt a moment of heart-stopping horror as I heard the sound of scrunched-up paper that accompanied the virtual action. But then it was over. Marco was gone from my laptop.
    After that, while I was still feeling brave, I took out the letters I’d read so many times and the pressed flower that had seemed such an important symbol of my feelings for the man in whose garden it had grown. I’d carried them from Venice to Paris and to London. Now I put them all into the bin in the kitchen, before I poured the fast-cooling remains of my camomile tea over the top of them, ruining them for ever. It was the only thing to do. The right thing.
     
    It was about four o’clock in the morning by the time I went back to bed. By now, I was properly tired and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. In fact, I fell asleep in the middle of reading and would wake up with the imprint of my paperback pressed into my cheek. But until then, I slept deeply and dreamlessly. I was not bothered during the night by thoughts of Venice and my masked lover. No paramour came to call up to my window and entice me to join him in the shadowy felce of his sleek black gondola. No passionate stranger slid his hands all over my naked body as though he were playing a rare and delicate instrument. No man made music of my protestations, my acquiescence or my sighs of ecstasy and delight.
    I slept. I woke up. In the morning the light through the thin curtains at my bedroom window was grey. I looked at my face in the mirror, creased and blurry with sleep. Time to face the day. The future.

Chapter 5
    The Hotel Frankfort, Berlin
    Thursday 9th June 1932
     
    Drat it. There’s still nothing from Mother. I can’t believe my luck. Things have been very tight indeed, particularly as I had to splash out on a pair of new boots to avoid harassment every time I leave the hotel. Honestly, I started to think that perhaps I should offer someone an afternoon of enslavement and scatological entertainment just to be able to afford to move out of this fleapit and into somewhere decent again. I am sure that nobody looked at my boots in such a strange way when I was staying at the Hotel Adlon.
    On Monday and Tuesday I went to all the secretarial agencies I could find, but it turns out that my German is nowhere near good enough to get me a position as a bilingual secretary. The woman I met at one place was quite cruel about my lack of ability. She said that perhaps in England people are happy to employ young women on the basis of their looks alone, but in Germany a neat appearance has to be backed up by solid administration skills. In any case, the bitch continued, while my dress was very fetching, it was far more suitable for a nightclub than a respectable office. I suppose she had a point about that. I have been forced to wear some very strange combinations while I cannot afford to send my clothes to the cleaners.