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he doesn’t approach any of the other people – the handful of, presumably, Poles placing stiff Cellophane bunches of flowers at the foot of the memorial, or in one case on a particular grave. There is nothing I can say, and in any case my weeping becomes so violent that I can’t speak. I am crying, not for these dead airmen but because I am overwhelmed by the passions that Iwo has called forth.
    We leave at the same time as an elderly couple heading towards a small car. Iwo speaks to them in Polish, asking for a lift to the station. In the car I hear him speak his mothertongue for the first time. It is rapid, abrasive, unsmiling. He makes no attempt to introduce me, which is a relief since I am plunged into ugly, frowning despair. It is not that I share his grief, he has shown no grief, but because ten days ago I was moving safely through my small accustomed world. Now it has been transformed into one of vulnerability and terror by my passion for him: this outsider, this exile.
    In the train we begin to do ordinary things again. He buys a sandwich and two plastic cups of tea. I read the paper, and look at the pictures in
Marie-Claire
. He dozes and I close my eyes but soon, as the train flashes across the East Anglian flatlands, I open them to watch Iwo’s sleeping face. I wish I dared take out my notebook and draw him. His expression is cloudless, his body relaxed. He shows no sign of the tension that has prevented me from sleeping ever since we met. My mind overflows with questions: why did he say he was an ‘unperson’, or ‘nonperson’, and what does it mean? Is he trying to tell me that he is a dissident under sentence of death, and, if so, why not just say so outright? I study his face: is he victim, or, no, torturer? I try to imagine what he might have done but can only conjure up visions of cells and pain.
    We have both been subdued ever since we stood together at the foot of the war memorial. Also, of course, we are both tired. We’ve made love several times this week, after which, instead of curling up together into natural, animal sleep, I have had to leave his bed and travel home charged with energy. Even last night, which he spent in my bed, I was still awake when the birds began singing in the dawn. By now I am in an almost trancelike state; my perceptions abnormally acute but my body sluggish with exhaustion, dragging itself towards sleep, kept awake by an overactive mind. For Iwo it’s so simple. He’s tired: he sleeps. I lean against the headrest, my eyelids fall, I doze. At King’s Cross we separate, going in opposite directions on the tube. I still don’t know the telephone number of the house in which he lives. He might never ring me again.
    When I get home I am astonished to find that it is stillonly late afternoon, and all three children are having tea. It is unusual for Max and Cordy to be home on two successive weekends, so I assume Kate must have phoned and asked them to come over, to keep her company, or perhaps for a family conference: What shall we do about mother? Although the other two smile, Kate looks sullen if not positively hostile. Oh Lord, please not … I haven’t the energy to cope with one of her moods.
    â€˜Darlings, listen, I’m dead tired: I think I’ll go and lie down for a couple of hours. Wake me just before seven and I’ll make supper.’
    â€˜Do you want us to do it?’ asks Cordelia, but I feel guilty already at having been away all day. The least I can do is cook for them.
    Later, over supper, I relax a little thanks to their warmth and normality.
    â€˜Drop your shoulders Mother …’ says Max, and as I turn to him and laugh and do an exaggerated slump I realize that he is right, my whole body is tensed and rigid. ‘What’s up?’ he asks.
    How do I explain to my children, who have perceived me for years as a comfortable asexual figure, that I am spinning in a maelstrom of love?