[The blue notebook continued, but without dates:]

People have heard the room upstairs is empty, they ring me up about it. I’ve been saying I don’t want to let it, but I am short of money. Two business girls came round, they heard from Ivor I had a room. But then I realized I didn’t want girls. Janet and myself, and then two girls, a flat full of women, I didn’t want it. Then some men. Two of them instantly set up the atmosphere; you and me in this flat alone, so I sent them off. Three were in need of mothering, wrecks and waifs, I knew I’d be put in the position of looking after them before a week was out. So then I decided not to let rooms any more. I’ll take a job, move to a smaller flat, anything. Meanwhile Janet’s been asking questions: It’s a pity Ivor had to leave, I hope we’ll get someone as nice as him again, and so on. Then out of the blue she said she wanted to go to boarding-school. Her friend from the day school is going. I asked why and she said she wanted other girls to play with. Instantly I felt sad and rejected, then angry with myself that I did. Told her I’d think it over — money, the practical side. But what I really wanted to think over was Janet’s character, what would suit her. I’ve often thought that if she hadn’t been my daughter (I don’t mean genetically, but my daughter because she’s been brought up by me) she would have been the most conventional child imaginable. And that is what she is, despite a surface of originality. Despite the influence of Molly’s house, despite my long affair with Michael, and his disappearance, despite the fact that she’s the product of what is known as a ‘broken marriage’, when I look at her I see no more than a charming, conventionally intelligent little girl, destined by nature for an unproblematical life. I nearly wrote: ‘I hope so.’ Why? I have no time for people who haven’t experimented with themselves, deliberately tried the frontiers, yet when it’s a question of one’s own child, one can’t bear the thought of all that for them. When she said: ‘I want to go to boarding-school’ with the petulant charm she is using now, trying her wings as a woman, what she was really saying to me was: ‘I want to be ordinary and normal.’ She was saying: ‘I want to get out of the complicated atmosphere.’ I think it is because she must be aware of my increasing depression. It is true that with her I banish the Anna who is listless and frightened. But she must feel that Anna is there. And of course, the reason why I don’t want her to go is that she is my normality. I have to be, with her, simple, responsible, affectionate, and so she anchors me in what is normal in myself. When she goes to school …