Therefore when I received my wake-up call at seven-thirty I felt as heavy—both physically and mentally—as I had felt lithe and weightless just eight hours previously. But the bathwater into which I lowered myself was practically stone-cold (on purpose) and, even though adhering to the regulatory couple of inches, efficiently supplied the shock a sluggish system required. By the time I had eaten breakfast, settled my account and walked to the station, I felt fine again and was looking forward to seeing Sybella. Yet it was now a different kind of anticipation from the one I had experienced earlier: quieter and less heady, more questioning and less accepting. I was back at work. I still felt happy to be spending time with her but I had stopped believing in roses round the door and had become re-infected by suspicion. The very fact that at the camp gates she had responded to me in the way she had: even this now troubled me—shamingly unfair though I realized it to be. Thankfully, today’s journey resembled Friday’s rather than Saturday’s: no more perching on my suitcase whilst the military squeezed by.
