‘Please read it.’

I unfolded the paper gingerly. The letter was entirely typed, with neither opening greeting nor final signature written by hand. ‘Dear Shit,’ it began. How charming. I looked up with raised eyebrows.

‘Go on.’

Dear Shit, It is almost Christmas. It is also late and I am drunk and so I have found the nerve to say that you have made my life a living lie for nineteen years. I stare at my living lie each day and all because of you. No one will ever know the truth and I will probably burn this rather than send it, but you ought to realise where your deceit and my weakness have led me. I do not quite curse you, I could not do that, but I don’t forgive you, either, for the course my life has taken. I did not deserve it.

At the end, below the body of the text, the author had typed: ‘A fool.’

I stared at it. ‘Well, she did send it,’ I said. ‘I wonder if she meant to.’

‘Perhaps someone else picked it up from the hall table and posted it, without her knowledge.’

This seemed highly likely to me. ‘That would have given her a turn.’

‘You are sure it is a “her”?’

I nodded. ‘Aren’t you? “My life has been a living lie.” “Your deceit and my weakness.” None of it sounds very butch to me. I rather like her signing it “a fool.” It reminds me of the pop lyrics of our younger days. Anyway, I assume the base deceit to which she refers comes under the heading of romance. It doesn’t sound like someone feeling let down over a bad investment. That would make the writer female, wouldn’t it? Or has your life steered you along new and previously untried routes?’

‘It would make her female.’

‘There we are, then.’ I smiled. ‘I like the way she cannot curse you. It’s quite Keatsian. Like a verse from ‘Isabella, or The Pot of Basil’: “She weeps alone for pleasures not to be.”’

‘What do you think it means?’

I wasn’t clear how there could be any doubt. ‘It’s not very mysterious,’ I said. But he waited, so I put it into words. ‘It sounds as if you have made somebody pregnant.’