The pain, she thought, was going to be big, ‘like a tower’. It frightened her. So did the thought of losing her mind if the secondaries reached her brain. As for the sorrow – not seeing the four children further into adult life, never knowing the grandchildren to come, not being with him into old age, not discovering the marriage they should have started long ago. ‘My fault,’ Roland said. She did not contradict him, merely squeezed his hand. Later, on the walk back to the hotel, on that same subject, she murmured, ‘You were a restless fool.’
