I know. I could have told you and I didn't. But at some level I still see you as the person who broke my heart and left me unfit for normal relationships.

You underestimate your own power so you don't have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it. Oh well, Bobbi's rich, Nick's a man, I can't hurt these people. If anything they're out to hurt me and I'm defending myself.

The restaurants and bars all had miniature Christmas trees and fake sprigs of holly in the windows. A woman went past holding the hand of a tiny blond child who was complaining about the cold.

I waited for you to call me, I said.

Frances, you told me you didn't want to see me any more. I wasn't going to harass you after that.

I stopped randomly outside an off-license, looking at the bottles of Cointreau and Disaronno stacked up in the window like jewels.

I got up from the bench. It was too cold to sit outside. I wanted to be warm again. Lit from below, empty branches scratched at the sky.

I didn't think it had to be, I said.

You know, you're saying that, but you obviously weren't happy that I loved someone else. It's okay, it doesn't make a bad person.

But I loved someone else.

Yeah, I know, he said. But you didn't want me to.

I wouldn't have minded, if ...

I tried to think of a way to finish this sentence without saying: if I were different, if I were the person I wanted to be. Instead I just let it fall off into silence. I was so cold.

I closed my eyes. Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn't know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can't always take the analytical position.