Mummy got up, paused by my bed for a moment, and walked slowly towards the door. Suddenly she turned around, and with a distorted look on her face said, “I don’t want to be cross, love cannot be forced.” There were tears in her eyes as she left the room.
I lay still in bed, feeling at once that I had been horrible to push her away so rudely. But I knew too that I couldn’t have answered differently. It simply wouldn’t work. I felt sorry for Mummy, very, very sorry, because I had seen for the first time in my life that she minds my coldness. I saw the look of sorrow on her face when she spoke of love not being forced. It is hard to speak the truth, and yet it is the truth: she herself has pushed me away, her tactless remarks and her crude jokes, which I don’t find at all funny, have now made me insensitive to any love from her side. Just as I shrink at her hard words, so did her heart when she realised that the love between us was gone. She cried half the night and hardly slept at all. Daddy doesn’t look at me and if he does for a second, then I read in his eyes the words: “How can you be so unkind, how can you bring yourself to cause your mother such sorrow?”
They expect me to apologise; but this is something I can’t apologise for because I spoke the truth and Mummy will have to know it sooner or later anyway. I seem, and indeed am, indifferent both to Mummy’s tears and Daddy’s looks, because for the first time they are both aware of something which I have always felt. I can only feel sorry for Mummy, who has now had to discover that I have adopted her own attitude. For myself, I remain silent and aloof; and I shall not shrink from the truth any longer, because the longer it is put off, the more difficult it will be for them when they do hear it.
Yours, Anne
Tuesday, 27 April, 1943
