My wedding anniversary came and went. I let it pass. I sat at the small table in the balcony trying to decipher Por Por’s bird-like brush strokes with the help of the online Chinese-English dictionary.

‘Yin!’

‘Here.’

‘Hiding in the balcony again? What the heck are you reading?’ Robert yelled from the living room where he was watching a football match on the telly.

‘A paper I’ve to read before my meeting at the National Archives tomorrow.’

‘Finish it quickly and come in.’

‘I will.’

My voice sounded cheerful but I looked out at the sea with a heavy heart. The night was very warm. I would have preferred to read in the study or Janice’s room with the air-conditioner on. But Robert always wanted me to sit where he could see me, and it was best not to argue. He could be very sweet if I simply obeyed him, and often I did. No point in arguing over little things like where one should sit, was there? Yet a small part of my mind disagreed. For years a keen sense of resentment and injustice had niggled me as if some undeserved damage had been inflicted on my sense of self and freedom. A petty hurt as inconsequential as a mosquito bite that had grown larger and more intense over the years till here, I was pressed by this huge resentment that had been sitting on me hard as a rock.

I gave the pot of bamboo a kick and looked up at the dark sky. The few stars above the ships beyond the lagoon were feeble and faint. From fifteen storeys up here I looked down at the expressway. Aggressive streaks of red and orange from the taillights of traffic were whizzing past Sea Cove towards the city.

When we first moved out here to the east coast there was hardly any traffic on the newly built expressway. No hawker centres, car parks, tennis courts, or skating rink, or MacDonald’s along the beach. The East Coast beach was just a vast expanse of white sand, wild grasses and rows upon rows of swaying casuarina trees. And Sea Cove was a quiet little condominium built on reclaimed land, its apartments sold to civil servants at a low price. Not many people had wanted to live on reclaimed land for fear the apartment blocks might sink over the years. Jokes about flooding and fishing from one’s window were bandied around. But the apartments were spacious, and a young couple expecting a baby needed space. Janice and her school friends had loved the beach but now that she had grown and left us to carve out a new life for herself in Canada, the apartment felt large and empty. Every December when the sea winds howled through gaps in the creaky windows at night, it could be cold and lonely.

I glanced into the living room. Robert was still engrossed with his football match, a drink in his hand as was his habit. His eyes were glued to the screen. I studied his ruddy profile. More than twenty years with this man, I thought. How did I get through them? And there are more years to come. With the advance of medicine, we could both live possibly up to a hundred. A dreadful thought, and my spirits sank. For better or for worse. More than twenty years of my life. How could I just get up and walk away? I had stopped counting the years I had stopped loving. When we were young it was easy enough to plunge into love’s fire. Easy to fall passionately and deeply in love. And then live together thereafter blind to the slow dying glow of love’s embers till one morning we awoke on a bed of cold grey ash.

My sweet, sweet darling, he had whispered in crowded Trafalgar Square on the night of our honeymoon. An arm around my waist, his fingers sending thrills down my spine, he’d whispered, ‘If ever we’re separated by war, darling, if ever Southeast Asian nations fall like dominoes, promise me, promise you’ll make your way back here. London will be safe. No matter what happens I’ll come here to look for you unless… unless I’m dead.’