I think I agree with John’s speculations on infidelity as a self-fulfilling prophecy, incidentally – only, it seemed to me that John had always been the one to accuse himself. He behaved as someone pinioned from the outset. He had the posture, from the moment I met him, of a man who viewed himself as terminally hard done by. Once his worries about the judgements of his ex Isobel had worn off, I’d inherited the position of arbiter as his self-generated need for condemnation tracked over to me. There was little I could have done to dodge it, to shirk the role I’d been attributed against my will. This desire for castigation was something John experienced both in his personal relationships and in the professional realm. ‘Of course, no one wants to hear what I think,’ he would often say, all evidence to the contrary, when we were discussing a catalogue introduction he’d just finished, an interview he’d given – ‘I’ was not a pronoun here but a name, and the name was his. This was, further, a clipped phrase that signalled the end of an exchange, and as such doubled as a notice that I had said the wrong thing, something to displease him. It might be more generous to say that I’d inadvertently grazed an insecurity, that John was, at the heart of it all, a deeply insecure person.