I felt the jar again. Now, having thought it all out, it is quite clear, but then I was confused. For he was talking as if he had worked for an hour instead of perhaps five minutes. He stood there, lounging, restless. Then he said: ‘I’ve a friend back home whose parents separated when he was a kid. Do you think it might have affected him?’

For a moment I couldn’t answer, because ‘the friend’ was so obviously himself. But he’d been talking about his parents not ten minutes before.

I said: ‘Yes, I’m sure your parents’ splitting up has affected you.’

He jerked himself up, his face closed into suspicion, and he said: ‘How did you know?’

(*10) I said: ‘You’ve got a bad memory, you told me about your parents a few minutes ago.’

He stood, alert, watchful, thinking. His face was sharp with suspicious thought. Then he said in a scramble of words: ‘Oh, I was thinking about my friend, that’s all…’ He turned and went upstairs.

I sat, confused, fitting things together. He had genuinely forgotten he had told me. And I remembered half a dozen occasions in the last few days — he had told me something, and then mentioned it a few minutes later again as if it were a new subject. Yesterday, for instance, he said: ‘Do you remember when I first came here,’ speaking as if he had been here many months. And another time he said: ‘That time we went to the Indian restaurant,’ when we’d been there that day for lunch.

I went into the big room and shut my door. We have an understanding that when my door is shut, I’m not to be disturbed. Sometimes, with my door shut, I hear him walking up and down overhead, or coming halfway down the stairs, and it’s as if a pressure is on me to open the door, and I do. But today I shut the door fast, and sat on my bed and tried to think. I was sweating lightly, and my hands were cold, and I couldn’t breathe properly. I was clenched with anxiety, and saying over and over again: This isn’t my anxiety state, it isn’t mine — didn’t help at all. (*11) I lay on the floor on my back with a cushion under my head, relaxed my limbs and played ‘the game’. Or tried to. No use, for I could hear Saul upstairs, prowling around. Every movement he made went through me. I thought I should get out of the house, see someone. Who? I knew I couldn’t discuss Saul with Molly. I telephoned her nevertheless, and she asked casually: ‘How’s Saul?’ and I said: ‘Fine.’ She remarked she had seen Jane Bond, who is ‘in a real state over him’. I hadn’t thought of Jane Bond for some days, so I talked quickly of something, and lay down on the floor again. Last night Saul had said: ‘I must take a little walk or I won’t be able to sleep.’ He had been gone about three hours. Jane Bond lives about half an hour away walking, ten minutes by bus. Yes, he had telephoned someone before he left. That meant, he had arranged with Jane, from my home, to meet her to make love, gone over, made love, come back, got into my bed, slept. No, we didn’t make love last night. Because, unconsciously, I was defending myself against the pain of knowledge. (Yet with my intelligence I don’t care, it’s the creature inside me who cares, who is jealous, who sulks and wants to hurt back.)