Idiopathy

determinedly.
    ‘And what the fuck,’ she said, ‘am I supposed to do with that?’
    Nathan shrugged.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to do anything with it.’
    Her upper lip was quivering almost imperceptibly. She seemed at pains to slow her every physiological function – her breathing, her blinking – to near inertia, creating an oddly sympathetic sensation in Nathan: time not so much stopping as becoming impossible to parse.
    ‘Do you want me to
help you
?’ she said. ‘Is that it?’
    ‘No,’ said Nathan.
    ‘Because I can’t,’ she said. ‘And I’m not going to apologise for that. I’m not going to feel guilty.’
    ‘I don’t want to be helped,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m tired of people helping me.’
    ‘Why didn’t you just say what I wanted you to say?’ she said. ‘You knew what I wanted you to say. You said it before. Why couldn’t you just say it again? Why did you have to go and give me all this
stuff?
? I don’t want your fucking
stuff
. I … I have
stuff of my own
. Can’t you
see
that? I was giving you a
chance
. I was giving you what you wanted.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nathan. ‘But I don’t think that’s true.’
    She seemed to draw herself inward and upwards, straightening and steeling herself. She looked at him coldly. ‘So you hate me too, is that it?’
    ‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘That’s not it.’
    ‘Liar,’ she said.
    He sat forward in his seat. He had very definitely had enough. He rolled his sleeves back down and slipped on his jacket.
    ‘That’s it,’ said Katherine. ‘Fuck off. Just like last time.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing changes, does it?’
    She started to cry. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said. ‘Nathan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I … I keep saying these things to people and …’ She took a long, shuddering breath. ‘Please don’t go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to go. I didn’t mean it. I
never
mean it. You of all people know that.’
    Nathan picked up his bag, which he’d left under the table.
    ‘Take care,’ he said gently. ‘Give Daniel my apologies.’

    I n later months, and even more so in later years, it would be clear to Katherine that she had made a mistake. She thought about it now, slumped in her chair, alone, holding the flame of her cigarette lighter to the burnished edge of Daniel’s dining table and watching the wood as it blackened. The regret, she felt, was looming at her as if from some far-off place: distant, but edging in. What she felt now was merely the recognition of what she would feel, one day, when she let herself, at which point it would, of course, be too late. She tried, as she always tried, to recalibrate. She tried to picture Nathan, increasingly paralysed by remorse, calling her up at an ungodly hour and trying to pour his guts out. He’d be back, she told herself. They always came back. She’d tested him; he’d failed. It was disappointing, but at least now she knew.
    If only she was more stupid, she thought. If only she was more blind. Then she’d be able to believe all that and be happy. But she wasn’t; she couldn’t; and she wouldn’t be. Clarity was cruel that way. It eased nothing; spared her nothing. If people knew her as well as she knew herself, she thought, as well as she knew others, they would forgive her. But to do so they would have to know her, and that was something she simply couldn’t allow, because what they saw, though forgivable, would not be something or someone they could love.
    Her lighter became too hot to hold. She let the flame go out and watched a seedling of smoke push its way up from the wood before dwindling. She thought about Daniel’s face as he screamed at her. At least she had that, she thought. We all, at some stage of our lives, need someone we can control.
    She wasn’t quite sure why she was still here, and then she realised it was because she had, over the course of the evening, felt the dark tickle of a growing certainty at the base of her brain, as if it were being licked by the little wisp of smoke that had risen from the edge of the table, that she was not going to see Daniel again after tonight, and once that certainty solidified, she felt unexpectedly unable to leave. She had not, despite all the things she’d said and thought up to this point, wanted to leave in quite this way. Arguably, she had not wanted to leave at all, just as she had not wanted Nathan to leave her.
    She was very tired, she now realised. Not just from the