You follow Joan's thoughts. She lives in England with her husband: her three children are now adults and with their own lives and spouses. She went to visit her daughter who wasn't feeling well, and while trying to go back she was stuck and the India-Turkey border because of the bad weather, and in the middle of nowhere she had nothing to do but think. It took a while, it was a long process, but Joan came to realize what we had just seen her in her thoughts. She always wanted her quiet life where everything's perfect and she's done all good things, and her family loves her, and all is good, but we saw the truth. When she told us of how she had her husband choose a job he didn't like, she was satisfied with herself and how she saved him, but we "saw his face", and knew the truth. She thought she had always made the right choices, good decisions, she was sure she had dedicated her life to her family, never thinking of herself, but we could see the truth, as could her little child when once asked her what it was that she did for the family: it's the nanny that gives them food, clothes, and generally takes care of them, and it's dad that pays her and pays for everything else, working all day. What was her role exactly? She tried to answer, but not in a satisfactory way, so she got angry at the insolence, feeling hurt and not appreciated, until she was apologiesed to.
She eventually, out there alone with herself in the desert, came to realise that her husband had a while back been in love with a woman that later died, that her oldest daughter Averil is far away emotionally from her, that she never understood any of her children. Tony had succeeded in doing what he wanted despite what her mother wanted, but her youngest daughter Barbara had married the first man that had proposed her just to get away from that house. Barbara didn't want her here, she had probably tried to kill herself after having had an affair with a scoundrel that disappeared. Her father had always known about this, but she had never realised it. She didn't want to. Sometimes she had seen the truth, more than once, but had always refused to ackknowledge it; she had always chose to believe that everything was fine and perfect, thinking them nothing more than crazy thoughts. Fortunately her husband is such a good man he's practically a saint, and the children always adored him. Joan thinks all this when she's alone out there, scared out of her mind when she thinks she has lost herself, and is alone in the world. She decides that she'll apologise to her husband, because she does love him, always has, and wants to change life... just like that.
On the train, she talks to a Russian aristocratic woman about all this, and she remains silent, as if doubting her, just like I was feeling.
As soon as she's back home, that whole adventure starts to seem like a dream, like a fool idea, and gradually her mind brings her back to her old self. She acts like nothing ever happened when she sees her husband again, but we hear his thoughts when he regrets he never told that woman that he loved her, when he reads Barbara's letter and we now have proof that everything we and eventually Joan suspected was really true. Only when he mumbles something about being alone, Joan runs into his arms shouting But I'm not alone! I'm not alone, I have you! and he comforted her Sure, you have me, but inside he was thinking that it was not true, she was alone, and she always will be, but with God's help she'll never know... I felt chilling, can't really explain it. I liked this book: nothing happens, in a way, and yet we get a look into this family and their souls, and can analize Joan much more than she can herself.
That final line really chilled me, and I hoped this is the right word. I'm sorry I can't explain it better, but I felt it inside.
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