A movie on TV about John Waters. I laughed till I was weak and grateful—I’ve been missing that angle of life—shit and fart jokes, the utter refusal to be in any way serious, intellectual or polite—and what is the quality Divine has, that ‘puts everybody in a good mood all the time’? I said to V, ‘There’s never any little treats in your fridge. And there’s not enough light and fresh air.’ He hates light and likes to keep the windows closed against the cold, though the place is a box in which he smokes cigars. He won’t ever stay a night with me over at E’s: ‘If I’ve slept somewhere else I find it really hard to get started on my work the next morning.’ I say briskly, ‘I used to be like that in primary school. But I got over it.’ He is delaying to infinity the duty of levelling with his wife. He is permanently lying doggo: ‘I don’t know why I have to tell her.’ Dumbfounded, I say, ‘You’re thinking of not telling her?’ ‘I don’t see why I should have to,’ he says, in a lightly defensive tone. I let it pass, in sheer astonishment. As if he thinks of himself as having simply walked out of her life.