She let me go and disappeared . . . without a backward glance. And I, I turned away, sick at heart, but not knowing . . . that I had said goodbye to her forever. Now I wish, as much as I have ever wished for anything . . . that I had been able to cage those precious minutes within the nets of gold I could not recognise as such. And that I had been somehow able to prolong those minutes into years. Nine years ago, at the age of fifty. Gillian Bouras's...