62. Nino Rota, The Godfather Theme (1972)

I have realised something significant these last weeks. It sounds overblown to say it, but it's true: I have fallen out of love with everything. It's as if I have lost all those romantic bones in my body; all those nerve-endings that tingled and burned every time I heard the first bars of a favourite song, read the first lines of a T.S. Eliot poem, or remembered something special, something sacred, from the past. They've all gone.

Tonight, I think I might have felt the first signs of life in me again. I went swimming, with four female friends, in the Oasis Centre in Shaftesbury Avenue, in the heated pool on the roof, under a sky thick with a pea-souper, the air swirling with ice. The moon kept peeking through like a sly cat, and as I watched it, swimming slowly on my back, I remembered the misty sensation of what it felt like to be alive.

It's a less romantic ending to the story to say that we went for pasta, then, us four girls, two heavy with pregnancy, and ranted and raved about subjects from the sublime (having children within marriage and without) to the ridiculous (whether Carrie from Sex And The City needed a sharp word). But as The Godfather theme played as the pasta was scooped up and the cranberry juices were sunk, I felt hope again, strangely enough. Honestly – truly – I think that I'm ready to let that in.