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Alexandra: London, 1986

I don’t look at other people very much, unless they’re beautiful or interesting. But yesterday, as I waited for the money, I looked at the other people queueing in the bank. They were neither beautiful nor interesting, a dozen or so of the shadowy strangers who pass down the margins of life every day.

They were worried, preoccupied, impatient, grey with London air and ordinary ill health, with too many bags or too many papers. The queue was stalled, as usual. They were standing still, of course. But they seemed to trudge uphill as I looked. They were going uphill into the darkness.

The men looked back at me, hard, which is only to be expected; men have always looked at me, all my life – I suppose they always will.

And I thought, every one of you would like to be me. Every single one of you would ditch your life if you could do what I’m about to do.

I’m flying away with my darling.

From the chores and the queues and the dirty light.

We’re going on holiday and never coming back, and life will be a fairy-tale.

The last few days have been made of lists, lists on every scrap of paper. I tried to get Chris to draw up lists, but he said my lists would do for six. I started to get tired and cross. We started to dislike each other, Chris and I, Chris and I who adore each other.

It’s the tension, of course. We’re a little afraid, of other people’s sorrow and too much happiness. We’re afraid we are trying to be too lucky.

I haven’t slept well these last few nights. I’ve nothing on my conscience but I haven’t slept well. Chris has decided to block everything out; he’s slept too well, and snored.

Last night – the very last night at home – was the longest night I have ever spent. The Newsons’ dog howled like a wolf, three gardens away, and a small child sobbed ...

On this final morning I woke feeling frightful and lay for a moment with my eyes half-closed, trying to grapple with a horrible dream. I had to recall it or I’d never escape it. When dragged to the surface it was about a little girl with a pretty smile and an empty suitcase.

She wants me to buy her a Japanese doll. She holds up the doll she wants me to buy, which is puggish, with slanted eyes, not pretty. I say so, and she explains it’s a dog. I tell her the dog has to be put down. She cries, and folds herself into the suitcase. She promises they will follow us.

It’s perfectly meaningless. The morning is beautiful, I smell my bacon cooking downstairs, the dream is no longer frightening.

Things start to seem more promising.

The suitcases, packed but not yet locked, stand in a line along the wall. Joy of the place-names that will fill those labels. The lists have all gone into the waste-paper basket, each with its long smug line of ticks. I’ve had my injections, collected the money, ordered the cab for the airport. I make one final triumphant list. Apple, paperbacks, flask full of brandy, in case we get stuck at Budapest airport and the barman has no Rémy Martin ...

And I start to feel it, a foretaste of fun, a shiver of ecstatic anticipation, the first of a thousand unknown bars, just the two of us alone together ...

This morning I’m avoiding the children – postponing the children, shall we say – until I have enough caffeine inside me.

Yesterday evening they both became suddenly (st