I reread the letter and felt again the presumptuousness that you could write about love when we hadn’t declared it, the absurdity of mapping out our whole lives when we’d only just met, the shock of you mentioning ageing when I wasn’t ever going to grow old, and laughing at how wrong you were about children. And I remembered too my secret pleasure that you’d chosen me. I was twenty then, a different woman from the one I am now. I read that letter so many times, wondering what you hoped your reader’s reaction would be. Rereading it yesterday made me cry for when we were starting out, before I’d
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