OK then. Just one more post for now, since it is about last night.

We decided on Indian. We’ve been there before but I wasn’t so impressed last time and less so this time. But that’s not what I need to talk about at all.

We talked without really talking.

How was the flat hunting going?

How are you getting on where you’re living?

How’s work?

They were the subjects. As part of the answers there were things like, ‘a friend who lives on that street came with me’.

What friend? A colleague? No. But no explanation. An explanation is not needed – I know already or, at least, I guess but I bet I’m right since the things that I do, actually, know lead to a guess that will be, pretty much, spot on.

And, whereas it still has the power to wound, it is only a little now, like a pin prick compared to a stab with a bread knife.

The flat-hunting story continues. I ask questions, just as I am supposed to. He asks me questions just as he is supposed to.

We do the things we are supposed to with no feeling, no desire (and I don’t mean for each other but, rather, no desire to make a wave or really enquire or, be involved).

The conversation could be wrapped up in one of those typical English conversations:

Hello! How are you?
Fine, thanks, and you?
Oh can’t complain, you know.
Well, goodbye then.
Goodbye.

The end.

Of course, it went on much longer than that. But nothing was ever really said. I wanted to tell him of Ico; of the fact that Best Mate is coming over for some more time as she’s feeling much better; of my potential few days with the boys at a friend’s place in Rome.

Instead I said nothing. Partly because I now want some secrets from him, as he now has from me and as he thought he had from me but didn’t, so much, over 6 months ago and partly because I didn’t want him to tell me of things that he has done or is going to do that mean I am permanently excluded from parts of his life that I hadn’t been before – just like he is already excluded from parts of my life.

We could never get those back even if we wanted to.

He did tell me of the holiday plans that he doesn’t want to do; that he says he won’t do. I don’t enquire as to what he will do instead but stick to the simple things that I know about him such as ‘and when will you tell them that you won’t be going? The day before?’, smiling and laughing but without smiling and laughing at all because this is ritual and, after 20 years, I can do it without thinking, without feeling, without anything. Not that I expect anything amazing after 20 years. I’m not that deluded. Nor am I sad for that either. It’s the way it is and what can be expected. No surprises after all that time.

I notice he looks thinner still but that at least the moustache has gone, which is better. And I tell him so. He tells me the story of why it went and I am bored within the first couple of words since it is all irrelevant and as irrelevant as me telling him in the first place but at least mine was only a sentence.

I joke that, as his ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have phoned him during the meal, the holiday with them will make them all like a little family. He knows me too. He knows I am joking and taking the piss. We laugh as we should; as is required. We probably both know what we are doing.

We talk a little about FfI, complaining about the same things about her. United in our complaints but not really caring what the other has to go through, knowing that the other doesn’t have to go through this if they didn’t really want to.

The samosas were crap. The main course was decidedly average. The house wine expensive, as I pointed out just after he had ordered it, but we only drank half a litre in the end anyway, probably because neither of us wanted to extend out this nothingness when no possible good could come of it.

It wasn’t pretty but it could have been much worse. It did, however, feel more like we were in a Mike Leigh play (such as Abigail’s Party) and had the same ‘cringe factor’.

I didn’t go with the thought that it would be any better but I think I was prepared for most possibilities. This, though, left an empty feel.

Prices seem to have dropped for flats and it seems he will end up with a bigger flat than mine. I feel a little jealous but, at the same time, know I could have done no different and still love my flat anyway. And I do hope that he is happy with whatever he finds.

We shall see each other on Tuesday when certain things will be finalised. The Final Question still, after all this bloody time, hangs there. I can tell no one. I am alone in this, again, as always, as we all are, really.  I want to tell someone but they will only try and give me good advice – which I already know anyway and which will change nothing.

Those ties that bind are thin now and about to break. I can still see the things in him that I like and love but they are not mine now to ‘have and to hold’ – not that they ever were nor ever could be, really. To think that is so is a delusion.