The notices in the papers, the interviews, all the little aftermath of death.
Eating and drinking, trying to be normal, trying to be sane.
Frith, the servants, Mrs Danvers.
Mrs Danvers, who I had not the courage to turn away, because with her knowledge of Rebecca she might have suspected, she might have guessed… Frank, always by my side, discreet, sympathetic.
"Why don't you get away?" he used to say,
"I can manage here.
You ought to get away."
And Giles, and Bee, poor dear tactless Bee.
"You're looking frightfully ill, can't you go and see a doctor?"
I had to face them all, these people, knowing every word I uttered was a lie.'
I went on holding his hands very tight.
I leant close to him, quite close.
'I nearly told you, once,' he said, 'that day Jasper ran to the cove, and you went to the cottage for some string.
We were sitting here, like this, and then Frith and Robert came in with the tea.'
'Yes,' I said. 'I remember.
Why didn't you tell me?
The time we've wasted when we might have been together.
All these weeks and days.'
'You were so aloof,' he said, 'always wandering into the garden with Jasper, going off on your own.
You never came to me like this.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' I whispered.
'Why didn't you tell me?'
T thought you were unhappy, bored,' he said.
'I'm so much older than you.
You seemed to have more to say to Frank than you ever had to me.
You were funny with me, awkward, shy.'
'How could I come to you when I knew you were thinking about Rebecca?' I said.
'How could I ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?'
He pulled me close to him and searched my eyes.
'What are you talking about?
What do you mean?' he said.
I knelt up straight beside him.
'Whenever you touched me I thought you were comparing me to Rebecca,' I said.
'Whenever you spoke to me or looked at me, walked with me in the garden, sat down to dinner, I felt you were saying to yourself,
"This I did with Rebecca, and this, and this." ' He stared at me bewildered as though he did not understand.
'It was true, wasn't it?' I said.
'Oh, my God,' he said.
He pushed me away, he got up and began walking up and down the room, clasping his hands.
'What is it?
What's the matter?' I said.
He whipped round and looked at me as I sat there huddled on the floor.
'You thought I loved Rebecca?' he said.
'You thought I killed her, loving her?
I hated her, I tell you. Our marriage was a farce from the very first.
She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through.
We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together.
Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency.
She was not even normal.'
I sat on the floor, clasping my knees, staring at him.
'She was clever of course,' he said.