Diane

The email arrived on one of those blank days between Christmas and New Year, when it seems the calendar has ground to a halt and time has finally stopped. I recognised the sender’s address as that of a former colleague. The subject line read simply ‘Diane Parry’.

That kind of email at that time of year means only one thing. I took a breath and clicked to open it.

I am sorry to have to tell you that Diane died shortly before Christmas. The circumstances are not quite clear. Her brother will be arranging the funeral, which will take place somewhere near her childhood home in the West Country. There is no date so far because there may be an inquest. I will contact you again when I have more details.

I read it again two or three times. One’s mind skates over such things at first view and it is hard to assimilate what has been said. To hear of a death always provokes complicated feelings; I realised that I’d somehow expected this news for a long time; and yet it was unexpected. It was the end of a story I’d long hoped would become happier before it finished; now it never would. And news of the death of a former lover, above all, is fraught with complicated feelings.

I met Diane in the 1970s, when we were both young lecturers at a redbrick university, and I was fascinated – fascinated, almost, in the old, magical sense; for Diane cast a spell. She was a couple of years older than I, and when I arrived as a timid junior lecturer she already knew the place and its workings intimately and had a host of friends, ranging from the Professor of Metallurgy to the porters who humped canvas sacks of post onto trolleys twice a day and strode the corridors humming and jingling bunches of keys. She was tallish, with long blonde hair and blue eyes. She taught Old English, Middle English and – her speciality – Old French, a subject which brought her few students but devoted ones. I got to know her as a colleague and one day, on some now-forgotten Departmental business,