I am cold, I am tired, I am frightened. None of this is because I lay with any devil. There is no fallen angel to give credit for any of this. There is just hunger and pain and the sad realisation that my life will not end with a husband, or grandchildren, or even my own babies. There will be no home with a hearth that I can decorate with willow baskets and flowers, no doorstep to clean, no meals to cook, no clothes to mend. Instead there will just be an early and long dark descent into nothing. The nothing we all try to avoid. I did not think it would arrive so soon. I miss my family!
