Idiopathy

smug,’ she said.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t being.’
    ‘So why say sorry?’
    ‘Like, I’m sorry I gave that impression.’
    ‘You’ve got a black belt in disingenuousness, you know that?’
    He chose to assume this didn’t require an answer.
    ‘Men,’ said Katherine flatly. ‘Who gives a fuck.’
    ‘Sometimes I miss being single,’ said Daniel. He had no idea if this was an honest statement.
    ‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens when you’re happy.’
    Daniel had that paralysis feeling again. He blinked.
    ‘What?’ said Katherine.
    ‘It’s the way you say it,’ he said, not entirely trusting that this wouldn’t lead to an argument.
    She did the lash-bat again, all ice. Then she did her thin smile that somehow failed to involve the eyes, as if politely inviting him to annoy her.
    ‘How do I say it?’
    ‘I’ve just never known anyone to invest the word happy with such disdain,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never been able to decide why that was: if you simply don’t believe in the whole concept or if it’s more that you hate the idea of other people experiencing something you can’t.’
    He went quiet while his insides underwent a tectonic lurch.
    ‘I want to say straight away that that didn’t sound nearly as bad in my head,’ he added.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s OK. It’s a fair comment.’
    He wanted to say, with some incredulity:
It is?
He thought better of it and instead said nothing.
    ‘I mean, I get it, of course,’ she said, squinting slightly as if she could see what she wanted to say in the distance and was trying to bring it into focus. ‘I get why people want it, but, I don’t know. It lacks something for me.’
    ‘Happiness lacks something for you? Is that a serious statement?’
    ‘Have you ever known me to make an unserious statement?’
    ‘Well, admittedly no.’
    ‘Right, so don’t ask.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking recently that the whole trying to be happy thing makes people kind of unhappy so I’m experimenting with not trying to be happy at all.’
    ‘And how’s that working out?’
    She arched an eyebrow. ‘It has its moments.’ She ran a hand through the air as if to sweep the conversation off the table. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘You seem really happy, and that’s nice.’
    ‘It is,’ he said, after a tactful pause. ‘I think it is.’
    ‘Is it the hippy that makes you happy?’ said Katherine with a grin that wasn’t entirely free of hostility.
    ‘Partly,’ he nodded.
    ‘You don’t look like a hippy,’ she said.
    ‘That’s because I’m not one.’
    ‘Is it like a Romeo and Juliet situation? Do her family disapprove of you because you wear a suit?’
    ‘Her parents are very nice.’
    Katherine blinked. Daniel wondered if she’d taken his remark to be a dig at her mother. He wondered if he should clarify, but then clarification was chancy because she might not have thought that at all until he sought to clarify, at which point she’d immediately think it. He considered what he thought was a subtle shift.
    ‘How’s your mum?’ he said.
    ‘Subtle,’ said Katherine.
    ‘I didn’t mean …’
    ‘She’s her usual self, let’s put it that way.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘I suppose I sort of worry about her now,’ said Katherine. ‘I still get annoyed by her and all that, but sometimes I also just find myself feeling sad for her and hoping she’s alright.’
    Daniel nodded.
    ‘How’s your dad, anyway?’ said Katherine.
    ‘Comes and goes,’ said Daniel.
    It was Katherine’s turn to nod. They were both, Daniel noted, at great pains to show they understood.
    ‘Does he remember you?’ said Katherine.
    ‘Most of the time.’
    ‘Would he remember me, do you think?’
    She looked earnest, a little afraid. She had a thing about being forgotten. Everyone, Daniel thought, has a thing about being forgotten. In many ways it was why they were here now, having lunch, swapping inanities.
    ‘No,’ he said honestly.
    ‘That’s awful.’
    He laughed. ‘I
know
,’ he said, affecting high camp. ‘All that fabulous Katherine-ness, lost.’
    ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said.
    ‘I know. I was teasing.’
    Their food and coffee arrived. They ignored it. In the street, on the other side of the rope that demarcated their eating area, people moved back and forth who were just like them. Daniel imagined the things that worried them as they walked: the phone calls they