At the end of the day, when the moon starts to rise, the darkness settles over my heart. The long lonely nights always come this way. You settle into your silent reverie, and my endless chatter comes to an abrupt halt so as not to break the deep concentration on your face.

I sit alone and watch you.

I am wishing you would speak to me. What is on your mind? I am praying you would grant me that brief glance into your heart. I am hoping to read your soul.

It is the long lonely nights that distance me the most. During the day it is easy to pretend that everything is okay. I can rush about with all the nothing I have to do to keep my mind occupied. I can forget all that I think of when I lie alone at night pretending to be asleep. I am content chatting with you about which routes we are to take, or telling you some silly tale to wile the hours away. I will do anything to coax that adoring smile out of you, even if it means breaking my neck in the process. It is so easy in the daytime.

But on those long lonely nights...

Sometimes I cry silently with the emptiness that wells inside of me.

Anything to end those long, lonely nights.

Sometimes, as I am staring out into the darkness, I hear you sobbing in your sleep. You still will not allow yourself the release your tears will bring, even as you are unconscious of them welling at all.

But you do not know what I have done in the morning. You wake me with difficulty and wonder why I am so reluctant to leave my dreams.

If only you knew of my long, lonely nights.

As evening closes in, and you settle in to your silent reverie once more, I lie on my bedroll close to yours and wait for you to retire beside me. When you drift off finally, I do not wait for your dreams to come. I wrap my arms around you and close my eyes.

These are perhaps my longest, loneliest nights.

“我只不过想唱歌给你听

用我的声音
一首歌

只是希望你能听得进去

我只不过想唱歌给你听

谁给我回应
拍拍手

切歌之后下一个继续”

"With any luck by next year,

I'll be going out with one of these girls..

but for now let me say,

without hope or agenda,

just because it's christmas

(and at christmas you tell the truth) -

to me,

you are perfect
and

my wasted heart will love you.

Merry Christmas."

'I don't think a day goes by when I don't think about him in some way or other,' she said sadly, twisting her glass and gazing at the tiny bubbles. 'It's usually triggered by a piece of music or a film or some guy in the street who vaguely walks like him. Jack's basically blighted my life. I wish I could hate him but I don't. I'm probably still in love with him. But I'm only in love with a memory. I'm not in love with the Jack who just disappeared off the face of the earth. He can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned.'

I didn't want him to say anything more. I wanted the letting go to be silent, to go quickly.

Whit nodded. A deep, emphatic nod at something I could not see or hear. He said, 'I will miss you.'

'I'm sorry.' My words cracked as I spoke. I felt I'd been the seducer. I'd sat on the sea rocks like one of Homer's sirens and hired him. Even though he was ending it as much as I, I felt I was really the betrayer. That I'd betrayed my confessions of love to him, my promise of anniversaries.

'I don't want you to be sorry,' he said. 'The thing is, I needed' - he reached out and touched my face, a place near my jaw - 'I needed to love you.'

He could have meant a million things, but what I wanted to believe was that his grief over his wife has deadened his heart and falling in love with me had resurrected it. I wanted to believe that now he would give his heart back to the monastery. He would go on foraging in the rookery, waking to the sound of frogs in the bent island oaks, to the smell of Brother Timothy's bread, catching these little bits of God showing through.

'It's true of both of us, then. I needed to love you, too.' It came out with so much awkwardness, so much ineptness, I felt as if I should go on explaining, but he smiled at me and stepped closer.

He said, 'I told you we'd be damned and saved both. Remember?'

Sometimes some fear can be good. When you are afraid things are going to get worse if you don't do something, it can prompt you into action. But it is not good when you are so afraid that it keeps you from doing anything.

What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.

"Do you like Garth?'

Maggie half laughed, half sobbed. 'No, not much at the moment, but fortunately I'm too busy to think about it.'

Pam put her elbows on the table, cupped her face in her hands and looked Maggie straight in the eye. 'Don't you wonder what life might have been like with Jack?'

Oh no, not again. Maggie could feel an unpleasant shiver go right down her spine, as if to her toes. She glanced at her hands. Her knuckles were white from being clenched. She took another slug of wine for comfort.

'There was never going to be any life with Jack,' she said in a voice as firm as she could muster. 'That night we were supposed to be getting back together, the night he never showed up, was the worst night of my life. No show, no phone call, no letter, no apology, nothing. Just silence. So I'm sorry, but there was not going to be any life with Jack.'

The sheer physical pain of loss, the buckets of tears for months and months afterwards, the constant scanning of faces and crowds, hoping subconsciously for a glimpse of his soft tanned face, china blue eyes and mop of wavy brown hair. The shudder of disappointment every time the phone rang and it wasn't him. The anticipation of picking up the post, to find only the gas bill, yet another piece of junk mail, a letter from Mum or a jolly postcard from a girlfriend. The throaty roar of every old MGB's exhaust, TV reruns of Casablanca, From Here to Eternity and all their other favourite old films, everything Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald had ever recorded, a long green dress he'd sworn made her look more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman. These were the symptoms of the terminal illness that was called simply 'Jack'.

'I loved Jack very much,' she said, suddenly fighting hot tears, 'but it's no good loving someone who failed to show up. At least Garth is here. He might not be Mr. Congeniality, but at least he's stuck it out with me.'

She got up to get a piece of kitchen towel to wipe her eyes.

'I know I married Garth on the rebound,' she said slowly, as she said down again. 'There - I've said it aloud for the very first time. Admitted it, not just to myself, but to you. And I know he's a male chauvinist pig, but he didn't get a very good bargain either. I don't think he got a very loving wife and I often feel guilty about that. He doesn't know about Jack and all that emotional baggage. He doesn't know that I couldn't ever have made the same commitment to him that I would have done to Jack. So in a way, I've cheated him by not giving him one hundred per cent. What he thinks of me, I have no idea these days. But I need a different kind of commitment, one that didn't have the potential to hurt. If it was a rebound marriage, so be it. But no matter what Garth ever does to me, he will never have the capacity to hurt me in the way that Jack did. There - I've said it.'

She blew her nose noisily into the kitchen paper and chunked the screwed up sheet in the bin.

Pam sat open-mouthed at this sudden confession. Now it made sense why Maggie had stuck with Garth. She had never realised that Maggie felt such guilt at her lack of emotion where he was concerned.

'I realise,' she began apologetically, 'how lucky I am with Tom.'

'Yes you are,' said Maggie firmly. 'You made an active choice to marry him. You married for love, lust and sheer joy at the prospect of living with him for the rest of your life. I married for the companionship of a man who would be incapable of hurting me. It was a good enough reason then, and it's probably still a good enough reason now. Except that I feel I have short-changed him in a way. Now, let's change the subject and sort out my horrible wardrobe.'

They polished off the last of the wine and went upstairs.