"TEN YEARS? But I haven't done anything."
"Yar, yar, it's a bastard, I know," he said, nodding earnestly.
"But I didn't know it was there!"
"Sure, sure," he said, looking as if he'd got himself into a slightly awkward situation at a drinks party.
"Will you do everything you can?" "Absolutely," he said, getting up. "Yar."
He said he would bring me a list of lawyers to choose from and he could make two calls on my behalf, just to give the details of what had happened. Was in quite a quandary. Best person, practically speaking, would be Mark Darcy but really did not like idea of admitting have got into mess again, especially after he sorted out all the Mum and Julio stuff last year. In the end I plumped for Shazzer and Jude.
Feel like my fate is now in the hands of some fresh-of-Oxbridge Sloane. God, it is so awful in here. So hot and stinking and weird. I feel like nothing's real.
4 p.m. Very black. All my life I have had the feeling something terrible was about to happen and now it has.
5 p.m. Mustn't get down. Must keep my mind off it. Maybe will read poem, and try to ignore first two lines:
"If "by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If youi can force your heart and nerve and sinew