Idiopathy

gingerly into the odd space that follows a toast. ‘How are you, Katherine?’
    ‘Oh fantastic,’ said Katherine. ‘Still stuck in the same job in the same town. Still single.’ She dragged on her cigarette and washed it back with a chug of beer. ‘How about you? Daniel said you’re at your parents’.’
    ‘Yeah.’ He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say, not just to this but to anything.
    ‘That must pretty much suck.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Don’t you miss London? Don’t you
hate
being in the provinces? In the middle of fucking nowhere?’ She leaned back in her chair and grimaced. ‘I do.’
    ‘You’ve been saying that for years,’ said Daniel. ‘Why don’t you just go back?’
    ‘Just go back, he says.’ She rolled her eyes at Nathan again. Every moment of conspiracy felt simultaneously astounding and mean. ‘Nathan, back me up here. Did I or did I not ask Daniel a million times if we could move back?’
    ‘Oh don’t drag him into ancient arguments, for God’s sake,’ said Daniel. ‘And anyway, what’s your point? You don’t have to ask me now, do you?’
    ‘I didn’t have to ask you then,’ she said.
    ‘So why did you?’
    She turned her attention back to Nathan, who was beginning to wish she’d both stop singling him out but also somehow single him out in a more definitive way. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘What about you? How long can you stick it with the folks?’
    He shrugged. ‘I’m, ah …’ He slid what scant thumbnail he had under the label on his beer bottle. The corner lifted with surprising ease. ‘I don’t know. They’re pretty determined and I sort of owe them, so …’
    ‘What do you owe them?’ said Katherine, wearing an expression more suited to a bad smell than anything else.
    Nathan could also, he found, draw stripes in the condensation on his beer bottle.
    ‘Well it’s …’ He frowned. ‘I mean, I’ve caused them quite a lot of problems, and they paid for me to go to this place …’
    ‘So what?’ said Katherine. ‘You have to stay with them?’
    ‘Maybe let’s not give him the third degree, eh?’ said Daniel. He sat down next to Nathan and patted his shoulder in a way that made Nathan want to sob. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ he said.
    ‘Oh fuck off,’ snapped Katherine. ‘Stop trying to show off. Patronising me doesn’t make you Mr Sensitive, you know. All I’m saying is that Nathan is an adult, and he shouldn’t feel guilty, or do anything out of some twisted sense of loyalty.’
    ‘I’m sure he feels just great now that you’ve freed him from the burden of guilt.’
    ‘Well what’s your contribution?’
    ‘I do feel guilty, actually,’ said Nathan. ‘Like, a lot.’
    Daniel looked both surprised and slightly put out. Katherine looked smug.
    ‘Of course he feels guilty,’ said Katherine.
    ‘Why?’ Daniel turned to Nathan, the hand once again on the shoulder and once again causing Nathan distress. ‘Why feel guilty, man?’
    It seemed the outer edges of the beer label came away more easily than the main body, meaning Nathan now had a tattered mess of a label that wouldn’t shift any further. He wondered if he could get away with leaving the room and coming back when they’d moved on to another subject.
    ‘He feels guilty,’ said Katherine, ‘because of what he tried to do.’
    ‘But that’s not something to feel guilty about,’ said Daniel, who seemed to be speaking in the abstract rather than addressing anyone directly.
    ‘I’m not saying he
should
feel guilty,’ said Katherine. ‘I’m just saying that it’s inevitable he
does
, that’s all. Stop saying really obvious things and trying to pass them off as profound insights.’
    ‘I do feel guilty,’ said Nathan. ‘I basically did quite a shitty thing and made them worry. They worry a lot and I’ve made them worry more.’
    ‘But you weren’t well, right?’ said Daniel. ‘I mean, it was a symptom, wasn’t it? You weren’t yourself. You can’t feel guilty if you weren’t yourself.’
    ‘I sort of was myself,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m not really meant to absolve myself by just saying I wasn’t myself.’
    ‘What do you mean you’re not meant to?’ said Katherine.
    ‘It’s not part of my treatment,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m supposed to confront rather than deny.’
    Katherine was studying him intently, leaning forward in her chair, blinking in the sting of her own cigarette smoke. Nathan rolled another cigarette so as to have something