And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say.

I am too dark in my heart tonight.

When it's done, it's done. And no one will know until it's done.

I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.

Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.

I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him... It is Richard, smiling at my surprise. I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him.

One’s lover is one’s partner in observing and understanding the world. Marriage is a place where joint narratives are composed. If the lover is a liar then all your joint observations are unreliable. You will have to start all over again.