The Sense of an Ending

It puzzled me that she had suggested a meeting. Why not use Royal Mail and so avoid an encounter which she clearly found distasteful? Why this face-to-face? Because she was curious to set eyes on me again after all these years, even if it made her shudder? I rather doubted it. I ran through the ten minutes or so we had spent in one another’s company – the location, the change of location, the anxiety to be gone from both, what was said and what was unsaid. Eventually, I came up with a theory. If she didn’t need the meeting for what she had done – which was give me the envelope – then she needed it for what she had said. Which was that she had burnt Adrian’s diary. And why did she have to put that into words by the grey Thamesside? Because it was deniable. She didn’t want the corroboration of the printed-out email. If she could falsely assert that I was the one who had asked for a meeting, it wouldn’t be a stretch for her to deny that she had ever admitted arson.

Having arrived at this tentative explanation, I waited until the evening, had my supper, poured an extra glass of wine, and sat down with the envelope. It didn’t have my name on it: perhaps more evidence of deniability? Of course I didn’t give it to him. Nor did I even meet him. He’s just an email pest, a fantasist, a bald cyberstalker.

I could tell, from the band of grey shading to black round the edge of the first page, that here was another photocopy. What was it with her? Did she never deal in authentic documents? Then I noticed the date at the top, and the handwriting: my own, as it used to be, all those years ago. ‘Dear Adrian,’ the letter began. I read it through, got to my feet, took my glass of wine, poured it rather splashily back into the bottle, and made myself a very large whisky.

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves.

Dear Adrian – or rather, Dear Adrian and Veronica (hello, Bitch, and welcome to this letter),

Well you certainly deserve one another and I wish you much joy. I hope you get so involved that the mutual damage will be permanent. I hope you regret the day I introduced you. And I hope that when you break up, as you inevitably will – I give you six months, which your shared pride will extend to a year, all the better for fucking you up, says I – you are left with a lifetime of bitterness that will poison your subsequent relationships. Part of me hopes you’ll have a child, because I’m a great believer in time’s revenge, yea unto the next generation and the next. See Great Art. But revenge must be on the right people, i.e. you two (and you’re not great art, just a cartoonist’s doodle). So I don’t wish you that. It would be unjust to inflict on some innocent foetus the prospect of discovering that it was the fruit of your loins, if you’ll excuse the poeticism. So keep rolling the Durex on to his spindly cock, Veronica. Or perhaps you haven’t let him go that far yet?

Still, enough of the courtesies. I have just a few precise things to say to each of you.

Adrian: you already know she’s a cockteaser, of course – though I expect you told yourself she was engaged in a Struggle With Her Principles, which you as a philosopher would employ your grey cells to help her overcome. If she hasn’t let you Go All The Way yet, I suggest you break up with her, and she’ll be round your place with sodden knickers and a three-pack, eager to give it away. But cockteasing is also a metaphor: she is someone who will manipulate your inner self while holding hers back from you. I leave a precise diagnosis to the headshrinkers – which might vary according to the day of the week – and merely note her inability to imagine anyone else’s feelings or emotional life. Even her own mother warned me against her. If I were you, I’d check things out with Mum – ask her about damage a long way back. Of course, you’ll have to do this behind Veronica’s back, because boy is that girl a control freak. Oh, and she’s also a snob, as you must be aware, who only took up with you because you were soon to have BA Cantab after your name. Remember how much you despised Brother Jack and his posh friends? Is that who you want to run with now? But don’t forget: give her time, and she’ll look down on you just as she looks down on me.