This boat life will be the death of me. I have been rather low lately with various niggles and wheezes, spluttering and occasional flushes, all of them stages on the withdrawal and recovery from O that I appeared to have embarked upon. But I am weakened and irritable, taken to phoning Karen on impulse, having nothing to say. I find myself eroticising the most unlikely of clients and then, having closed the session, I breeze down into the kitchen with a passion for the small talk of my colleagues. I have never embraced the community of my fellows as I have recently, including that of Gareth. Of course, Helen is ill and Neil is lovesick, I am withdrawing and Gareth is insane but we are, at last, the very image of a happy family.

As for Canova's Pauline, dear Reader, I touched her breast. In fact, I ran my finger along her cold lips, as if waiting for her to bite.

Thom is twelve and starting a new school. The mackerel have left early this year, so lately it's been dismal fishing. But he has seemed unduly relaxed about that, happy to spend all morning with me, and catch nothing. And it's on mornings such as these that I wonder if there are whole swathes of his interior life of which I know nothing.

I long to be home.