“That’s why I prefer to have my own place”.

Apparently.

After discussion about Buddhism, brought on by R’s new religion, it developed into something else. As these things do.

For F, this new Buddhism thing was a way of escaping from looking at himself and fixing that.

“You shouldn’t look back”, he says, followed by, “You should look forward”.

We continue talking about various things about R, An explains that she didn’t realise he had lived in Milan. The ‘history’ was explained. He was supposed to be coming to Milan for 3 months to cover maternity leave. F said he could stay with them (F and S) but the problem was that, when R came, already F and S were having a few problems. F said that he found it difficult to cope with sorting S and looking after R. So R only stayed a month, in the end.

And that was why he preferred to have his own place so that, should anything happen between us, he could also go back to his place for ‘a month or two’.

Of course, I wanted to say something like ‘but you should never look back, you said’ but I didn’t. Not least ‘cos he is a little stressed at the moment and also because I like things the way they are and I would, if I was being honest, only say this as a means to play Devil’s advocate – which is not the right reason at all.

There’s time. And I can wait until it is right. Or, if it’s never right then that’s OK too.