From Fitzroy’s Private Diary (Extract 180)

It’s always been the women who’ve saved me. From the outside, I appear to live a privileged life. I’m rich; my wealth roughly equally split between my inheritance and money that I’ve made myself (it certainly doesn’t come from my pittance of a salary as a spy, but then, all I do is risk life and limb, preventing nasty international situations, and who’d expect a decent salary for doing that?). The gilt is beginning to come off.  I’ve a terrible relationship with my father. I still grieve for my mother, who died when I was a child. I went to a semi decent school and landed the opportunity to attend one of the best universities (due, in no small part, to my natural ability with languages). I left before I completed the first-year examination. I couldn’t see the point of it all. I could learn languages anywhere, and it seemed that the world was an infinitely more exciting place than a college quad.

I’m a mixture of good and bad fortune, like everyone else. Most would say I’m more fortunate than unfortunate, but then, few know about my murdered first wife, or where my heart truly resides. They only see the line of glamorous and exotic ladies whose bed chambers I pass through. Still, without physical diversions, I fear I’d become even more disassociated from my so-called peers than I feel most days. Intimacy grounds you. The honest connection you make with a woman, when there’s nothing between you but skin, is unlike anything else in life. Yes, there’s pleasure, this is what most reminds me that I’m part of the human race.

My marriage, and I was very young, was never going to be a faithful one, but as a daughter of one of the families traditionally involved with British espionage, I always assumed she knew this, even if she never acknowledged it. However, such extra marital affairs would’ve been strictly work related, even if that’s something of a side thrill for a young man. 

Now, though, the affairs I conduct are not part of my role as a spy (of course, there are still occasions when I have to do the deed, for the sake of the country) but most of my affairs are ones based on affection and connection. I fear if I had stayed married to my Rose, I’d have become less human, in the same way I see many in my profession go.  

No, as I sit here waiting for my paramour to steal away from her woefully inattentive husband, I must admit, it’s always the women who’ve saved me.