Helen is back!

So, having thrashed around in the bath to one of the more ferocious quartets, I combed my hair and tried to compose a suitable face with which to greet her. I wanted to convey several things at once. First, a measure of sorrow at her failed romance. However, the sorrow should co-mingle with an eyebrow of real surprise that Ross could ever have treated her thus. All of which should be underpinned with a lusty pleasure at seeing her again but with an overriding awareness that these things take time. In truth, driving to work the long way, I wasn't sure my face was up to all this. On entering the house I could hear Helen in the kitchen with Gareth- was he lowering his voice?- so I decided to go straight to my room, and flew up the stairs.

In fact, it allowed Helen to play a solicitous role. Within minutes she was knocking at my door with two cups of coffee. She smiled, settling into the client chair. Could I ever love her? Certainly, one of the disasters of my marriage was Karen's failure to make me hot drinks.

What a fool I am.

We are all fools for love, I said, imagining the wide expanse of my own stupidity.

Yes, but you said this would happen.

What do you mean?

She looked at me evenly. You knew what Ross was like.

I never knew a thing, Helen.  I'd never met him, until you introduced us. As far as I was aware this was absolutely true. And anyway, whatever I happened to think of him I would have kept to myself. Hah, Gareth, his lowered voice. I made a mental note to break his spine. Helen smiled faintly, as if also understanding that her charge was trying to get me in trouble. Gareth's meddling was, as ever, born of his overweening need for Helen's approval. How could she not warm to it? But in the quiet of this moment, she allowed me to understand that if I were to indulge him, like a father to our difficult child, then there would be rewards for me later, in her room, possibly at the days end.

I love her grey hair. She often wears it up, allowing a few loose, stray hairs to beguile me.

At lunchtime from my window, I saw her leave.

Halfday, clearly.