Bethan Roberts

Then, realising I am now free to look at him as blatantly as I like, for hours if I want to, I freeze.

I can’t do it. I cannot raise my eyes to him. My heart becomes frantic with the weight of it, this unfettered pleasure that lies ahead.

Charlie occasionally touching Jim’s neck, Jim catching his wrist as he did so. Looking at them, I allowed myself a little fantasy. I could live like this with my policeman. We could spend evenings chatting to friends, sharing a drink, behaving as though we were – well, married.

‘Well. It’s as I said. I’d like to meet her.’

I have no choice, I know that. I can pretend she doesn’t exist and risk losing him altogether, or I can put myself through the ordeal and keep a crumb of him.

‘You drive too fast,’ he observed as we took the coast road out of town.

‘Are you going to arrest me?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘I didn’t think you were the type, that’s all.’

‘Appearances,’ I said, ‘can be deceptive.’

One is never sure, in Venice, what is reality and what reflection, and when seen from the back of a vaporetto, the whole place looks like a mirage, floating in an impossible mist.

I stood in the doorway and watched my husband. His shoulders moved in great heaves, and he let out a series of strange, animal-like groans.

So anxious to see him that anything seemed possible. Conventions, other people’s opinions, the law, all appear laughable in the face of your desire, your drive to reach your love

Did you think, then, that being in Tom’s home at last might not be all you’d hoped?

He gave a big Tom laugh. It drowned out everything around us

What else can make him real, except for my words on paper?