uncomfortable beds, then lies in them until his whole body’s riddled with bedsores.’ ‘Nice image,’ I joked, trying to lighten the mood. I suspected she was making a fuss about nothing, but she wasn’t having it. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘Marrying Francine, letting Gaby disappear out of his life. It’s one of his rules: he doesn’t value or like himself, so he’s rigid about what he will and won’t allow himself to do.’
You used to have a fair few rules yourself, Francine: no shoes in the house after you bought 6 Heron Close with its immaculate oak engineered flooring; no putting anything damp to dry on a radiator (why the hell not?); no food or drinks in the lounge; no having the central heating and the gas fire on at the same time, even when the cold’s getting into minus degrees; no opening a suitcase to pack for a holiday, and certainly no entering a supermarket, without first making a list. Once in a supermarket, no buying anything that isn’t on the list. And then the subtler never-directly-stated rules that governed the psychological lives of all those around you: no preferring anybody to you, no finding anybody more interesting than you, no being closer to anybody than to you. No suggesting, ever, that Tim might want to come round on his own if you were busy on a particular evening, or that if you needed to go into the office one Sunday, Tim might like to come out for lunch with Kerry and me rather than sit at home alone doing nothing, for no reason other than to ensure you didn’t feel excluded. We had to remove a hell of a lot more than our shoes for you, Francine. We had to shed our authentic selves (yes, I know that sounds intense, but a) no one will ever read this, and b) I don’t give a toss). The constantly looming threat that was that you would ban Tim from seeing us: one of us would slip up and do something that made it clear that the three of us were closer to one another than any of us was to you, and that would be it – Tim wouldn’t be allowed to see us again. None of us was prepared to risk that. Without Kerry and me, Tim wouldn’t have had anybody in his life apart from you. So we swallowed most of the conversations we’d have liked to have, and sat there like robots, saying the kinds of things we thought would meet with your approval. In our fucking socks, most of the time.
Apart from making us remove our shoes when we were in your house, you couldn’t dictate what Kerry and I wore, but Tim wasn’t so lucky, was he? Before he met you, he wore young duffer clothes, always: old-fashioned tweedy suits with waistcoats that made his clients look twice at his face and wonder if this might be an exceptionally young-looking seventy-year-old. The clothes might have looked strange on anyone else, but they suited Tim. Instead of looking like a relic from a bygone era, he looked exactly as everyone knew he was meant to look, and, even weirder than that, he somehow made everyone around him look wrong. I freely admit that shortly after Tim’s company merged with mine, I started to dress more traditionally, influenced by him. The irony is that I still dress that way, even though Tim hasn’t for years. When he got engaged to you, Francine, you told him he looked like Colonel Mustard and bought him a whole new wardrobe of clothes that would make him look exactly like everybody else. Tim didn’t seem to mind. When I asked him about it, he smiled and said, ‘Francine cares more than I do about what I wear. She thinks it matters; I know it doesn’t.’ I was unwilling to let it drop. I said, ‘She also cares more about getting married. You don’t really want to do it, do you? So why are you?’ ‘Because I said I would, and she wants me to,’ Tim explained, as if it made sense. ‘You’re right, she cares more. It seems fair that the one who takes the greater interest should have their way, don’t you think?’
But there was more to it than that, Kerry says. In contrast to
You used to have a fair few rules yourself, Francine: no shoes in the house after you bought 6 Heron Close with its immaculate oak engineered flooring; no putting anything damp to dry on a radiator (why the hell not?); no food or drinks in the lounge; no having the central heating and the gas fire on at the same time, even when the cold’s getting into minus degrees; no opening a suitcase to pack for a holiday, and certainly no entering a supermarket, without first making a list. Once in a supermarket, no buying anything that isn’t on the list. And then the subtler never-directly-stated rules that governed the psychological lives of all those around you: no preferring anybody to you, no finding anybody more interesting than you, no being closer to anybody than to you. No suggesting, ever, that Tim might want to come round on his own if you were busy on a particular evening, or that if you needed to go into the office one Sunday, Tim might like to come out for lunch with Kerry and me rather than sit at home alone doing nothing, for no reason other than to ensure you didn’t feel excluded. We had to remove a hell of a lot more than our shoes for you, Francine. We had to shed our authentic selves (yes, I know that sounds intense, but a) no one will ever read this, and b) I don’t give a toss). The constantly looming threat that was that you would ban Tim from seeing us: one of us would slip up and do something that made it clear that the three of us were closer to one another than any of us was to you, and that would be it – Tim wouldn’t be allowed to see us again. None of us was prepared to risk that. Without Kerry and me, Tim wouldn’t have had anybody in his life apart from you. So we swallowed most of the conversations we’d have liked to have, and sat there like robots, saying the kinds of things we thought would meet with your approval. In our fucking socks, most of the time.
Apart from making us remove our shoes when we were in your house, you couldn’t dictate what Kerry and I wore, but Tim wasn’t so lucky, was he? Before he met you, he wore young duffer clothes, always: old-fashioned tweedy suits with waistcoats that made his clients look twice at his face and wonder if this might be an exceptionally young-looking seventy-year-old. The clothes might have looked strange on anyone else, but they suited Tim. Instead of looking like a relic from a bygone era, he looked exactly as everyone knew he was meant to look, and, even weirder than that, he somehow made everyone around him look wrong. I freely admit that shortly after Tim’s company merged with mine, I started to dress more traditionally, influenced by him. The irony is that I still dress that way, even though Tim hasn’t for years. When he got engaged to you, Francine, you told him he looked like Colonel Mustard and bought him a whole new wardrobe of clothes that would make him look exactly like everybody else. Tim didn’t seem to mind. When I asked him about it, he smiled and said, ‘Francine cares more than I do about what I wear. She thinks it matters; I know it doesn’t.’ I was unwilling to let it drop. I said, ‘She also cares more about getting married. You don’t really want to do it, do you? So why are you?’ ‘Because I said I would, and she wants me to,’ Tim explained, as if it made sense. ‘You’re right, she cares more. It seems fair that the one who takes the greater interest should have their way, don’t you think?’
But there was more to it than that, Kerry says. In contrast to
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