“No. I never told them, never spoke his name. For forty years I never spoke of him. Until the other day when I was with Doris, and she talked of Richard as though he’d just that moment walked out of the room. It was lovely. Not sad any longer. I lived with sadness for so long. And a loneliness that nothing and nobody could assuage. But, over the years, I came to terms with what had happened. I learned to live within myself, to grow flowers, to watch my children grow; to look at paintings and listen to music. The gentle powers. They are quite amazingly sustaining.”
