Idiopathy

old feeling of being locked out of his life would return and grant him half a second’s respite from reality, but sadly he had no such luck. Everywhere he looked he felt himself looked at, and every time he was looked at he felt compromised.
    And then Nathan smiled and, rather oddly, patted Angelica’s hand, and said he was glad to be there, and thank you for having him, and it felt, momentarily, to Daniel, as if something, oddly the very same something he’d tried and failed to shake by becoming so pathetically enraged, had fallen away.

    K atherine’s first impression of Angelica was that she was pretty and therefore threatening. Her second impression was that she was exhausted and off guard and therefore vulnerable.
    After the warm and fuzzy introductions, during which Katherine made a conscious decision to appear as normal and friendly as possible in order to cause unease in Angelica, who would then have to be equally friendly and who would hopefully crack under the pressure, Daniel trotted nervously after Angelica and could be heard cooing and fussing from the bathroom as he turned on the shower and encouraged Angelica to take off her clothes. A minute later he strode back through the dining room without paying Katherine and Nathan any attention and disappeared upstairs.
    Katherine arched an eyebrow at Nathan, who had spent the last five minutes looking at the grain of the tabletop.
    ‘Psst,’ she hissed.
    He looked up. His face, which had been blank, seemed slow to take on his features, giving Katherine a fleeting and eerie sense that she was looking at a developing Polaroid.
    ‘Hey,’ he said.
    ‘What do you think?’ said Katherine.
    ‘About what?’
    ‘About
her
.’
    Nathan shrugged. ‘Seems nice,’ he said.
    ‘Bit bland, though, isn’t she?’
    Another shrug.
    ‘You’re hopeless,’ said Katherine, flopping back in her chair with exaggerated exasperation and lighting a cigarette.
    Nathan looked at the table again, hunching slightly. Daniel came back downstairs carrying clean clothes.
    ‘Got you well trained, hasn’t she?’ said Katherine.
    Daniel, who had got a little way past her and was nearly at the bathroom door, turned and walked back to stand in front of her. He put the clothes down on the table and held up his index finger.
    ‘Don’t,’ he said.
    ‘What?’ said Katherine.
    ‘Just don’t,’ he said. ‘You know what I mean.’ He turned to Nathan. ‘Sorry about all this,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute.’
    ‘No worries,’ said Nathan.
    Katherine sucked her beer and took a few minutes to try and catalogue the extent of Daniel’s kindness to her over the years in relation to the kindness he was now showing Angelica. Had he ever run a shower for Katherine? Had he ever helped her out of her clothes and appeared with a clean outfit for her? Not as far as she could remember, but then, she’d never come home streaked with shit and looking like she’d been gang-raped by cattle so in some ways it was difficult to tell.
    She wondered if that was the point, if it had always been the point. She had too rarely (if ever, if she was honest) given Daniel the opportunity to look after her. She had not come over all hopeless in the face of a simple task. She had not phoned him in panic at unsociable hours. She had not, perhaps, let him know that she needed him. Look at this evening, she thought: she’d steered him rage-wards primarily because she knew she could; because it would confirm a connection, a deeper knowledge.
    She hauled on her cigarette. Was this what men wanted, in the end? The damsel in distress? The little girl that needed to be protected? It was loathsome, she thought. Of course Daniel thought he loved Angelica: she never gave him any reason to think otherwise. He was happy because he was never threatened, and it was in keeping with Daniel’s grossly limited view of life and love that the only way he could imagine someone loving him was to be confronted at every bloody turn with how much they
needed
him, how much they
couldn’t live without him
, without ever giving the slightest credence to the possibility that perhaps the very fact Katherine
hadn’t
needed him, or at least hadn’t needed him in such an obvious way, was the best possible evidence that she loved him. After all, why else would she stay with him? But no, of course Daniel wouldn’t see it that way, because it failed to fit with any of the clichés he mistook for truths. He didn’t want to be