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Peter’s talent blossomed when Laura started to become involved. He was still very young, and she was younger still, but she seemed to make him mature as a poet in a short space of time. Sometimes they went to Amsterdam to comb the bookshops—and he made passionate use of her suggestions. They were mainly English-language poets like Thomas, Hughes, and Heaney.

She was subservient to Peter’s talent, as if he were the one who could put her own ineffable longings and pain into words, if only she fed his soul enough. Inevitably, she figured more and more in the poems he wrote, until, almost as a natural progression, he began a cycle that revolved completely around her. To avoid direct association, the girl in the poems was called Anna, but it was clear enough that it was about Laura. Of course she saw that herself, too, but it did not change her attitude. She gave him the beads to make the necklace that was intended for herself.

Peter’s message was not: I love you. It was about surrender, about a person he could give himself to heart and soul, and from whom he demanded complete surrender.