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'He goes on long enough,' I said one night, when we were both lying awake, staring at the ceiling. 'I should be so lucky,' said Laura. This was a joke. We laughed. Ha ha, we went. Ha, ha, ha. I'm not laughing now. Never has a joke filled me with such nausea and paranoia and insecurity and self-pity…

I don't know anybody called Ian. Laura doesn't know anybody called Ian. We've been together three years and I've never heard her mention an Ian. [...] I am almost certain that since 1989 she has been living in an Ianless universe.

And this certitude, this Ian-atheism, lasts until I get home. [..…

She asks how I am, and whether I'm looking after myself; she tells me that she doesn't think much of this Ian guy. We arrange to meet for a drink sometime next week. I hang up.

Which fucking Ian guy?

[...]

Which fucking Ian guy?

[...] (You can see this everywhere you go: young middle-class people whose lives are beginning to disappoint them making too much noise in restaurants and clubs and wine bars. 'Look at me! I'm not as boring as you think I am! I know how to have fun!' Tragic. I'm glad I learned to stay home and sulk…

[...] I have read books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera, and understood them, I think (they were about girls, right?), but I don't like them very much; my all-time top favourite books are The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, …