I am sorry that our friendship, or whatever name one may give to the obsessive relationship which has bound us together for so many years, should end in this way. This is not the place to utter its elegy.

She thought, I shall never tell it to Jack, the strange love which I feel for this doomed man, as if he were a dog lying in the road with a broken back.

What happened after that, and will be related later, was something entirely unexpected and so awful that Ludens had never spoken about it afterwards to anyone.

Ludens thought, why can't I do that, why can't I just ask a woman to hold my hand, why can't I ask Franca to!

But the spark vanished, there was no longed-for recognition, no dawning sign of recovery. The love she had learnt in tending him was an enclosed love, muted and maimed, already mourning. They would never communicate now.

I felt so ashamed with them because everything in their life was going so well and they were so sort of successful. I couldn't talk about what I wanted with them and they were always in a hurry.

The unspoken words trembled in the air.

Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.

Since she had been looking after him she had felt bound to him by a strange silent love.