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V says his old friend’s wife has told him she’d thought all along that I’d leave him. ‘And she said it’s because of your restlessness.’ Jolted by this, I call and ask her. ‘Yes. I did tell him you’d leave,’ she said. ‘Right back at the start. I couldn’t believe the shit he was giving you, and how l…

We went for a walk, early. Fresh morning: glossy water, tide high, clouds scattered, air spiked with perfumes from invisible flower-ing plants. We were both yawning. Coming up the steep part of Yarranabbe I said, ‘You know why we’re always tired? We’re exhausted from flogging a dead horse. Can’t yo…

He’s still insisting, always in the same words, like a mantra, that X is ‘just a friend. A good friend. That I like to see.’

I’m never going to get a blessing from him. He’s never going to tell me the truth. It’s beyond him.

Immense relief. Freedom, lightness, clarity. And thinking of V and his manoeuvres, a stunned, incredulous pity, even tenderness, as towards an oafish boy, a yokel, a creature barely evolved.

‘So,’ she said. ‘He stirred us up against each other.’

I said, ‘It’s obvious that he’s in love with you, but he won’t say so. If he’d been able to say to me, “Listen, I love X and I want to leave you and go with her,” I would have accepted it. I would have been hurt and angry and sad but I would…