How do you keep a secret? You tell no one. But everyone tells someone, it’s human nature, and your someone tells their someone, and they tell someone else. Secrets are never properly kept. Not forever.

This is not my confession. I’m not looking for forgiveness or understanding. I only want to tell the truth and tell it unreservedly. All any woman really wants, I think, is to be seen and heard.

‘Hear me out,’ men tell us, and we do, don’t we? Even if we’re not actually hanging on to every word, we hear them out. Even when we don’t believe them, we let them talk, but they rarely return the courtesy.

In the early days, when Norman and I sat together at a table every night, I’d see him wincing sometimes like it was all too painful, to have to give me five minutes of his attention. He’d say things like, ‘Is this going to be a long story?’ and, ‘Can you get to the point?’ and I would be ashamed and embarrassed. Yet he would talk and talk and talk, about himself mostly. Things he’d seen that day, conversations he’d had, people who’d annoyed him. Talking and talking, telling me about this one at work, that one on the train, how best to tie a knot or grill a sausage, and I’d sit at the other side of the table thinking about all sorts of things but rarely what he was talking about. I’d heard it all before, but I’d never say that. I’d look as interested as he needed me to look, and I’d make all the right little comments to encourage the story along.

He never wanted to hear how my day was beyond Fine, thanks or Not too bad. So I might tell the postman about the mess the neighbour’s cat made of my agapanthus, I’d give the teller at the bank the funny story I’d heard just that morning, and I’d tell the bus driver how I felt about the weather.

It was a lonely marriage. Perhaps I should have left him when I found out what was really going on, why he took those pictures and why he kept them, and the catalogues in the bedroom, but where could I have gone? I cared too much what people thought of me. I wish I hadn’t, but there it is.

Looking back, it’s easy to see the things I could have handled differently, should have handled differently. Like the song says, I’ve had a few regrets. I suppose I’ve had more than a few, but what purpose has it? Way leads on to way, doesn’t it? If you’d turned left instead of right, just once, your whole journey from that point on would be different, and I wish it was some days, but I had a lovely childhood, and where I’ve ended up now, here at the end of it all, isn’t such a bad place. I have felt seen and heard.

I am sorry that Rosemary and Eddie became so tangled up in the business of that girl. I didn’t think that the police would take or charge him. I didn’t know Norman had kept that little bracelet. I was angry with him when he told me, and angrier still when he said he’d lost it, and I suppose he must have dropped it over there, but I don’t think it was on purpose.

They’ll find everything they need to know Eddie had nothing to do with it. There’ll be a mess of strangers through this house. They’ll crawl beneath it, turn out all my drawers and pockets, dig up my plants. Lord knows there’ll be enough to keep them busy with their tweezers and dusting brushes. Eddie will be sent home no worse for wear, and Rosemary can decide then whether to love or leave him.

I will leave this for you to find, Meg, and I hope that by the time you come to read it, you will not feel pressed to share. They will take these pages from you if you show them, and make no mistake, they’ll bring you in close to ask their questions. You’ll not like it, and they don’t need every little puzzle piece, do they? Not when they’ve the picture on the box. Any little bits that don’t quite fit together won’t make any difference. What’s gone is gone.

What’s done is done, and so am I. I have set down everything I set out to share, and more. I have told my story. I hope one day you are able to tell someone your own. Whatever shame it is you ran from, Meg, it needn’t underline the rest of your life.

That artist was right to build his house over here. The light really is lovely, even as it dims. I sit here now in the late afternoon with a glass of wine at my elbow and it feels strange knowing it will be my last. But I am ready to go. This will be it—this view, these last few lines. I will rinse my glass and take my walk and then I shall put myself to bed.

It is late and I am tired. I am tired of protecting Norman. I am tired of hiding, and I am tired of keeping secrets. I can only trust now that God will forgive what I am about to do—and forgive the things that I have done.