I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over - dead white, of course, with no makeup and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was.

A ring of gold with the sun in it? Lies. Lies and a grief.

One thing, I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering.

What is so real as the cry of a child?

I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?

If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad.

I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one.