I’ve sold my books. I’ve let my house. I’ve agreed to sell Primrose Gully. I’ve changed cities. I’ve got no home. I am not to answer the phone at V’s, or be present when certain visitors come, or leave my stuff lying around. I am forty-six-and-a-half and I am humiliated. V is unable to resolve the thing by telling his wife the truth. I say to Z that I wish V would deliver the coup de grâce. ‘The trouble is,’ says Z, ‘that to do that, which I agree he must do, he’ll have to admit, to himself as much as to her, that his leaving her had something to do with you. He seems to need to keep the two things separate in his mind. He’s still saying they’re separate—as late as yesterday he was saying it. What I think he should do is tell her that your existence hastened the end, but that he’d felt it was over for quite some time already.’ ‘And did you tell him that?’ ‘Oh no.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. That would be to deny the whole way he sees himself and his situation.’ ‘But Z. You’re his friend. It’s the responsibility, the duty of friends to help each other see what they’re doing. How else can we find out what we’re like?’ Z seemed very surprised and put off by this definition of friendship.