Jennifer had never imagined in her wildest dreams that she could be this happy.

It went way beyond happiness. It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone if she’d tried to put it into words, because there weren’t words to express properly how she felt. The best she could do to describe it, and only to herself, was as a total completeness. Everything was complete. Her perfect life and her perfect marriage to a perfect husband and the most beautiful, most perfect baby in the world, all absolutely and totally complete. And secure, as if there was a wall between her and everyone else to keep out anything bad, as high and as protective as the wall encircling the mansion she’d just left.

Jennifer sometimes became frightened, like she was unsettled by the reflection now, although it was something else she never tried to explain to anyone, not wanting to be laughed at.

Her fear was that she – anyone – didn’t have the right to be as lucky as she was, so secure, so sure of everything and everybody. Of herself.

That feeling was easier to rationalize than the overwhelming happiness. It was, she knew, a guilt she’d never ever be able to lose absolutely. She’d read all the newspaper reports and gone through everything with Gerald – so many times he’d grown angry and wouldn’t talk about it any more – before finally accepting there was nothing to reproach herself for. So it wasn’t that. It was the even earlier unease.

It had been there from the very start of the affair, the first night even, long before she’d ever fallen in love with Gerald and realized that it wasn’t simply an affair after all. The moment, in fact, she’d decided she’d been stupid to become involved with a married man and that everything was going to end in the mess it had.

Not, of course, the tragedy that had actually occurred. And from which she’d emerged unscathed and uncriticized to her own very special, locked-away happiness. A happiness she still found hard to believe she deserved. Soon after the tragedy she had considered seeking psychiatric help, unable to accept Gerald’s assurances by themselves, anxious for an unbiased, unemotional opinion.