Saturday afternoon, 15 August 1942
My father wrote me to say that Evan's gone up to the Highlands to stay with Bobby Macmillan and is apparently having such a grand old time up there that he has completely neglected to write home, which reminds me that I never answered his letter. I'll get to it, but I'm still not sure what to say to him. I can't be happy that our mother's turned her keen eye of judgement on him, though I am pleased he understands me better.
Susie's fellow asked her to marry him. I like him very much, her Derek. (I always like other girls' boyfriends better than I should. It's my besetting sin, I think.) He's quite a good man, and I think she'll be happy, but I can't help but think he'll expect her to go back to America with him eventually, and I'm not sure I should like to live in another country. She seems not at all averse to the possibility, though. Susie is the sort of person whose confidence never fails.
Susie's father the Magister hasn't been home since the twelfth, and we didn't see him then. We almost never see him, actually, although he had a talk with us that was very funny, telling us that he was authorised to interrogate and dispose of Axis spies, and there were quite a lot of them wanting to know his business, so he had better not find any strange young gentlemen skulking about his house at night, because he'd hate to make a dreadful mistake.
I don't think Susie's parents are very happy with each other, though they are far politer about it than mine. Magistra Priscilla got a love letter from the Spanish priest who comes to the hospital, and Susie thinks it's ever so funny; I asked her why she wasn't upset, and she said her father has had a mistress almost as long as mine has done, but she is not supposed to know so she pretends she doesn't. I think the funniest part of all, though, is that Magistra Priscilla acts as though she doesn't know she has a love letter, even though everyone else knows that priest is in love with her, especially Madam Corinne.
Adele is quite cross with me and says she thought we'd spend more time together than we have. I don't know why, because I never thought we were terribly close. I told her I certainly wouldn't go out with her as long as she was running about with that dreadful Dolores Umbridge.
I still haven't managed to sleep with anyone new, just Olive once in a while; Edouard's been let out of confinement, but only to purchase his school supplies and see Olive. Some of the Muggle boys in Derek's little group are very handsome, but I'm stupidly afraid to sleep with a Muggle, even though I rather want to, just because Mother would hate it so. I don't know why. It's not as though I need to fear getting pregnant, or wouldn't know what to do if I did. It's almost superstitious, like the way some people from the really old parts of the Bois are afraid to eat Muggle food, for fear they'll never be able to get back to the real world.