The Stranger Diaries

room smelled of her. Jo Malone English Pear and Freesia

Why do you keep a diary then?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of it?’
Clare held her wine up to the light and squinted at it. There were thick white candles on the table and they smelled wonderful. Jo Malone, like Clare’s scent.
‘It’s to make sense of things,’ she said, at last. ‘Nothing’s as bad if you put it in writing. It helps you to take control, order things. Find a pattern, like you said. When I was at my happiest, or when I was having most fun, at university, I didn’t write at all. I started again when my marriage began to go wrong. It’s a form of therapy, I suppose. There’s a strange comfort in looking back at your worst times and realising that you got through them.’

‘Diaries don’t tell you what people think. Just what they think they think.