"Imagine someone, late at night, a bit drunk, writing a letter to an old girlfriend. He addresses the envelope, puts on a stamp, finds his coat, walks to the postbox, shoves the letter into it, walks home and goes to bed. Most likely, he wouldn't do all that last bit, would he? He'd leave the letter out for posting in the morning. And then, quite possibly, have second thoughts. So there's a lot to be said for email, for its spontaneity, immediacy, truth to feeling, even its gaffes. My thinking - if it isn't too grand a word for it - went like this: why take Margaret's word for it? - she wasn't even there, and can only have her prejudices. So I sent an email to Veronica. I headed it 'Question', and asked her this: 'Do you think I was in love with you back then?' I signed it with my initial and hit Send before I could change my mind.
The last thing I expected was a reply the next morning, This time she hadn't deleted my subject heading. Her reply read: 'If you need to ask the question, then the answer is no. V.'
It perhaps says something of my state of mind that I found the response normal, indeed encouraging.
It perhaps says something else that my reaction was to ring up Margaret and tell her of the exchange. There was a silence, then my ex-wife said quietly, 'Tony, you're on your own now.'"

(J. Barnes: The sense of an ending)