And at one point she said she had not slept, she was that excited.
And I ate my breakfast.
And about four times in that forty minutes I nearly said it. I can still feel where those four moments were.
And every single time, what stopped me was not kindness.
It was that if I told her in a dining room at half seven, she would have had three hours to decide how to be when she saw him β and she would have decided to be dignified, because that is what that woman is.
And I did not want dignified. I wanted the thing that happens to a face when it has not been given any warning.
That is what those four moments were about, and I knew it at the time, and I buttered toast.
What that did to her.
She was sixty in the November and she did not have the thing she was going to have.