I keep hearing the same four names from completely different directions

In eight years around this city I have worked out that it is much smaller than it looks. Four names come up constantly, from people who supposedly do not know each other, in towns twenty miles apart. Twice I have found myself in a conversation with a woman who turned out to know somebody I had written to two years earlier.

Forty one, Stockport, eight years in, one dynamic of three years that ended amicably when she moved to be near her son.

The smallness is mostly good. It means people behave, because behaving badly follows you around here in a way it never does in a bigger place. It also means that a man who has been quietly looking for eight years has probably already been discussed, which I find slightly unnerving and have decided to accept.

What it means for this post is that I am not looking for an introduction into a circle. I have brushed against that circle and it is not where I belong. I am looking for somebody who is also outside it: a woman who leads privately, has never been to anything, and has no interest in being known.

What I want is domestic and structured. Duties, standing rules, a fixed evening, service that is practical.

What I do not want is anything that involves being seen, discussed or introduced. I have watched how fast information moves here and I would rather stay out of the current.