I was just 15 that summer, 15 and fat and filled with the hopeless certainty that I could only grow fatter, until I eventually became a soft, silly woman like my mother. I could see my life stretching out clearly before me; I was firmly convinced that love would never be a part of it, that I was doomed to a lonely existence in which my only pleasure was food.

No wonder, then, that Theo became my focus. We had grown up together, British by experience, American by birth, playmates as children, schoolgirls in the same exclusive and dull institutions of learning. She was a strange-looking girl, long-legged, long-footed, thin, and clumsy. She rarely smiled—it was not in her nature to smile for others—and her severity, coupled with her coloring, a sort of tawny-gold all over—skin, long hair, eyelashes, even her slanted eyes—gave her the slightly unreal look of a bronze figurine. This put off some people, but I thought it gave her mystery and a strange beauty. There was nothing on earth I wouldn't have given, then, to be her.

Theo and I both played the violin. I was fairly good, if uncommitted; for her age, she was splendid. I have always loved to watch her play, watch her thin strong fingers dance across the strings, the impossible arc of her wrist, the way her mouth and long eyes narrow in total concentration. She was just coming into it then, her skill just beginning to catch up with her talent. Thus it was when my father, fired by a brochure he had seen which glowingly described a retreat in Greece for young musicians, offered to send us both, I was just as thrilled for Theo as I was for myself.