My first day back with Diana, having broken up with Wiggly but still very much in contact with her as I if I was not sure.
I awoke to find Diana up and about and bringing me early morning tea.
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We had another long chat this morning because she had been up crying all night at her disappointment. This whilst I ws fast asleep and snoring all night.
She said that I was not "her David" but "Wiggly's David" by virtue of the habits I had, the clothes that I wore and even the words I used. It would be impossible for her to compete with this young intelligent and attractive woman and this was not fair.
I talked her through this crisis and, after breakfast, I took Sam for a walk around his old haunts in the gravel pits. Come lunchtime, I took Diana and the girls along to the Little Paxton Little Chef for a nice lunch even if the restaurant was hot on another very warm day.
Once back, I picked up the Email message from Wiggly, "David, Thank you for your kind words of encouragement which serve only to make me cry again every time I read them.
I have spent a pretty miserable night reliving all our times together and wondering what you were doing. I am coming to accept that what you have done is for the best and that I may even thank you eventually.
I guess what you did was just as hard for you because you had to be so hard and cold towards me. However, it would make it easier for me to bear if you could tell me that you are hurting too - I'll try to resist the temptation to persuade you to come back.
I guess this means that your motto has been proved wrong now - everything is not possible, and I consider it an honour to be the person who found the chink in the armour of the great David Broad.
I would really like to hear from the old David again, not to say that you love me because I realise that you can't, but at least to acknowledge the feelings you had for me up until yesterday.
I would like to think I could keep in touch with you at least like this so that I could ask your advice on things if I am scared. I am scared now, but I am going to pick myself up again.
I want to remember our year together as a good time and I wonder if you would allow me a copy of your journal to help me remember all the good times?
I have never asked to read it recently because I suppose I didn't want to hear if you had doubts about me, but it is too late for that now. Please? By the way, Sheila phoned last night to tell me the full story on Chris and John which is quite shocking but I know you don't like to gossip...Wiggly".
Nigel had been contacting me off and on and I had to see him about the Cambridge Street planning permission and developments and so I called in on him today for an hour.
We chatted about his business developments and plans where he had made an agreement with a computer stationery distributors to sell his systems nationwide which seemed to be a good deal and he would still need Daniel and friends to manage the support centrally for these sales.
I briefed him about the deputy Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire's hints concerning his firearms charges. Essentially, they had charged him with a serious offence of wilful wounding in the hope and expectation that he would get off and therefore keep his shotgun license but he needed a story along the lines that he went out after a possible fox and was only then surprised and frightened by intruders.
I told him about my personal events and he thought that it was a mistake leaving a partner so fully compatible but now it was done, there was no way I should keep in contact with her but should regard her as being over with.
Back to The Hayling View where I turned to, in the absence of the gardener, and did the watering, feeding and maintenance chores and then, late in the afternoon, I decided that I needed better equipment for the garden watering.
I therefore invited Diana to join me on a trip over to Waresley Park Garden Centre or her to find some synthetic plants to decorate my parents' graves and for me to get the fittings that I wanted.
We enjoyed this and Diana was exhilarated to sit on their swings nearby and swing and rest her bad leg. Home for a late tea and then I worked for some of the evening finally compiling my reply on the Email dialog as follows,
"Wiggly; Thank you for being brave and sensible in the face of so much pain. I knew you had a miserable night and had been crying. I also know when you are going to "blink" on CIX to within a half hour on both occasions.
You cannot be as close as we have been without knowing these things; just as you know I have been hurting too and did not really need to ask, nor really need acknowledgement of my feelings towards you.
It was better to be clear and firm (not hard and cold!) as you had to know I was serious in my plans. What I find hardest to bear is the fact that I have been directly responsible for your unhappiness.
You can help me most by being positive and picking yourself up and getting on with life. I hope that this Saturday evening you have been dragged out with your trustworthy friend Michael at the cinema or some-such and I know that him, Tracey and others will rally round if you let them; which is what good friends do.
They are not part of the peaks and troughs of romantic entanglement. Tomorrow night is important for the early plans for your forthcoming star role. Concerning possibilities of everything, keeping in touch and my past year's journal.
I am still serious in trying to patch things up with Diana and staying here with the kids. I have to reciprocate the moving efforts she is making to change and fill the void in our marriage in the interests of the children.
You will understand that this has to be a genuine effort with me trying not to keep thinking of you. The correct and wise advice is for me not to remain in touch with you at all but, as usual, I do not follow my own advice even when it is correct!
Therefore you may keep writing but let us both adopt the voluntary code that we avoid intimate tone and language such that nobody could be offended by what we are saying to each other.
Of course, these conversations are private and the very fact of them taking place would be unacceptable to Diana, but it is the only way we can keep in touch without prejudicing the above.
It may be that, despite the best efforts of Diana and I we do not make it but then you would not have been to blame and we would have then accepted that we must part.
If you had already found somebody, or more likely, rejected my memory having felt that I rejected you, then that would be the outcome I had always predicted: There being just me and Sam!
The next few weeks will be crucial. About the journal. First it contains personal material about all manner of things and people; not just of you and me. Second you would be flattered by its content but also be even more upset by it and its memories.
Third, an honest and practical point this one, it is compromising - I know that you would not serialise it in the Sunday Times (though that lager would have ended up over my head if you had not needed to drink it!) but am sure you know what I mean.
Suffice it to say, that you were the star and heroine as usual and there were never ever any doubts about you! Just read my Little Paxton History book first and when you have finished ask again!
What I have been doing; Burying myself in trying to get my gardens back into shape after weeks of neglect and then my affairs likewise. Had a trip to Waresley to get my watering systems up and running and now have three independent sprinklers on the go; one from the river and two from separate water mains.
It looks like a rain storm out there and I get drenched every time I go out to adjust it. I hope you are watering those plants too! Lastly, do not be scared. You have friends and colleagues and me at a distance.
Look out for self-diagnosed signs of depression and get help if needed. Very lastly, I am interested in gossip really and that was rotten to hold back on the news about Chris and John! You can tell me now. Did you update Sheila? I have not told anyone. The Old David".
The question of the journal had been a difficult one but I agreed with Nigel's advice when he said, "No way!".
I was weakening in my resolve to let her go her own way and was leaving the door open for the future and I realised that she would read this with hope.
This done and then, in compensation, I made the effort to sit in the lounge with Diana. I took the backlog of my magazines in to read but she wanted me to sit on the sofa with her and our legs up and we stayed up and watched a film together.
To bed tired and again to sleep.