“I know what it was, of course. I’d lived with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there … one learns to keep it at bay, there are times when one even enjoys it – but there are also times when a desperate self-sufficiency doesn’t quite suffice, and then the search for the anodyne begins … the radio, the dog, the shampoo, the stockings-to-wash, the tin soldier. …”