Idiopathy

never-to-be-resolved-because-they-didn’t-actually-want-to-resolve-them problems and just
notice
, just
see
, that all was not well with another human being and that the things that were not well with her greatly outweighed the things that were not well with them. Problems were competitive in the confines of the office. Sympathy was a contact sport. Even as she felt aloof, the injustice keened away inside her, swelling and fading and dopplering off into her soul. She started to self-sabotage her secrecy, not wanting to tell but desperate to impart. She favoured implication over explanation. When Jules, who was, following a hallucinatory spiritual experience caused by an accidental commingling of generic toilet cleaner with branded bleach,
So Compassionate
, caught her coming out of the stalls dabbing bile from her lips and tears from her eyes and asked her what was wrong, Katherine said Nothing while making all the possible facial shapes of someone who should really have said Something. Sadly, Jules would probably have found it difficult to read body language even while being groped, and therefore failed to notice Katherine’s shuttling eyes and roving stare and quivering lip as she declared herself to be Fine, really
Fine
, just as Carol failed to notice when Katherine stared at the floor and sucked in her top lip after coming over faint in the staffroom and saying Nothing was wrong, that she was
Fine
.
    Her mother was no different. If anyone, Katherine thought, should have been able to recognise her plight without said plight having to be overtly specified, surely it was her mother.
    ‘How are you, darling, are you well?’
    ‘Well …’
    ‘How’s your love life?’
    ‘I don’t want a love life.’
    ‘Now Katherine,’ said her mother. ‘We’ve talked about this. That sort of lifestyle is all very well when you’re young, but at some point …’
    ‘I’m off men,’ said Katherine, before shifting into indirect disclosure mode, which meant leaving a lot of pregnant (oh God …) pauses in which she took deep and ostentatiously shuddering breaths. ‘I’ve … I’ve got a lot going on.’
    ‘Oh, darling,’ said her mother, suddenly and satisfyingly horrified. ‘You’re not … I mean … You haven’t … You haven’t
found religion
, have you?’
    ‘No,’ said Katherine.
    ‘Oh thank Christ,’ said her mother.
    ‘It’s just …’ (deep breath) ‘a
really hard time
, you know?’
    ‘Don’t tell me about hard times, darling. I’ve had more hard times than you’ve had hot dinners. Speaking of which …’
    ‘I’m eating fine.’
    ‘Good.’
    There was a long pause.
    ‘I think I should come and visit,’ said her mother suddenly.
    ‘I’m very busy.’
    ‘No you’re not. I’ll come on Saturday. I’ll be passing anyway.’
    Katherine said nothing.
    ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’ll be passing?’ said her mother.
    ‘Why will you be passing?’ said Katherine flatly.
    ‘Your sister’s taking me on a spa weekend. Isn’t that lovely? She’s been working so hard, bless her, and she feels absolutely awful that she hasn’t had time to see me, so we’re going to have some good old-fashioned girl time. We can stop in to see you on the way.’
    ‘Wonderful,’ said Katherine.
    ‘Oh Katherine,’ said her mother. ‘Can’t you at least
try
to be nice?’

    F or once, Katherine wasn’t lying when she told her mother she was off men. She could feel herself dissolving sexually. Her libido had somehow doubled yet also decentred, as if it were now situated somewhere outside of her and, greedy though it had become, she was unable to sate it simply because she was no longer able to locate it. Pornography and bruising masturbation weren’t helping. Images of men seemed fraught and distressing. Her body was unresponsive and blandly dry, yet somehow, somewhere in some part of her with which she was in less than perfect touch, the need for a fuck had never been stronger. Slippery as this urge was, she found it was better to extinguish it than to satisfy it, and nothing did that job better than the thought of children, which could turn lust to revulsion as rapidly as the little buggers seemed to turn pleasure to despair. Just as having problems made her feel suddenly inundated with the problems of others, so it seemed that just when she wanted to avoid not only the presence but even the suggestion of children, here they all were: tottering round town the regulation two paces