At the end of the affair she gathered together everything of mine that was lying about in her flat, packed it all into the suitcase I’d left behind, and left a message to tell me to come and pick it up. I didn’t return the call. When we finally met again last week, at The Spectator’s 180th birthday party, we hadn’t spoken for eight months.
After the party I went back to her flat to pick up the suitcase. It was standing ready to go, just inside her front door. But we found we had a lot to say to each other, a lot of catching up to do, and I stayed on for three delightful days, including a miraculous afternoon in the Arcadian Kent countryside that finished with a ham and cheese roll on a grassy knoll beside the lake at Lullingstone Castle.
When I finally got around to leaving, the thorny question of the suitcase arose.
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