‘No, not depressed. In a sense it’s worse. You’ve always had this weird kind of honesty, like an inability to make the compromises that everyone has to make, in the end, just to go about their lives. Let’s say you’re right about patriarchy, that it’s the only viable solution. Where does that leave me? I’m studying, I think of myself as an individual person, endowed with the same capacity for reflection and decision-making as a man. Do you really think I’m disposable?’

The right answer was probably yes, but I kept my mouth shut. Maybe I wasn’t as honest as all that. The sushi still hadn’t arrived. I poured myself another whisky, my third. Nick Drake went on evoking pure maidens, princesses of old. And I still didn’t want to give her a child, or help out around the house, or buy a Baby Björn. I didn’t even want to fuck her, or maybe I sort of wanted to fuck her but I also sort of wanted to die, I couldn’t really tell. I felt a slight wave of nausea. Where the fuck was Rapid Sushi, anyway? I should have asked her to suck me off, right then. Then we might have stood a chance, but I let the darkness settle and thicken, second by second.

[...]

The sushi showed up a few minutes after she left. We'd over-ordered.