Idiopathy

tell you all about it. Where are you?’
    Katherine took a long, deep breath and reached up to knead the muscles in her neck. Nathan was eyeing her in a manner that was becoming predictable.
    ‘Well hello there,’ she said, re-lighting the joint. ‘Come here often?’

    M arching up the stairs with his phone, breathless and on the verge of a spin-out that might have been containable were he still seated but which, in light of his body’s recalcitrant reaction to the sudden mix of adrenalin and exertion, now seemed as if it would end where so many spin-outs of the past had ended – on the floor, shallow-breathed, seeing nothing but a thick blizzard of white light where once there had been a room – Daniel managed to hold it together despite feeling a very strong sense of excitement and release at the prospect of not holding it together.
    ‘Hello?’ Angelica was saying on the other end of the phone. ‘Hello? Daniel? Who was that? Are you there?’
    ‘I’m just … I’m … I’m just going upstairs,’ Daniel managed to wheeze as he careened into the bedroom and flopped heavily onto the bed, bunching a corner of pillow into his fist in a hopeless attempt to slow everything down. ‘Hold on.’
    He was furious, and furiously stoned. How fucking typical of Katherine, he thought, just to
emerge
out of the stratosphere and start fucking up his life for no other reason than the fact that she didn’t like her own life and so resented anyone – especially him – who liked theirs. She’d never wanted him to be happy. His unhappiness had always been more important to her than her own happiness. It was
integral
to her happiness, in many ways. Her perspective was the exact opposite of all those couples Daniel loathed who came round and asked how he and Angelica
were
, collectively, as a unit, as if one couldn’t possibly experience an emotion not shared by the other. For Katherine, happiness was a finite resource. They could never both be happy. One of them had to selflessly offer their happiness, like a kidney donor, to the other. Now, even though they were apart, she was still leeching away at what he had; still behaving like a four-year-old and embarrassing him in public and determinedly wrecking anything and everything that fell within her reach but wasn’t hers. He was going to deal with Angelica, he thought, heaving himself over on the bed and staring upwards at the ceiling, trying and failing to shake the disconcerting sensation that he’d left half his face stuck to the pillow, and then go downstairs and absolutely
unload
on Katherine, and it was going to be fantastic, because this time, perhaps as never before, he had her bang to rights. There could be no moral evasion. Picking up his phone was absolutely wrong, and she was going to have to apologise, and her apology would be glorious and he would milk it dry.
    ‘Daniel?’ said Angelica. ‘Daniel?’
    He was also angry with Angelica. Because where was Angelica?
Where
, he thought loudly, was Angelica? Gadding around the country? With
Sebastian?
Defending a bunch of
cows?
Perhaps, he thought, he should give her a piece of whatever was left of his mind after he’d given Katherine a piece of his mind. Except, of course, that with Angelica there would be so much more to lose. With Katherine, he could now get as angry as he liked and there would essentially be very few consequences. The one thing she’d always held over him – that she’d leave him before he summoned the courage to leave her – was now little more than an uncomfortable memory. It was wonderful, in a way, to see her again, to have this opportunity to vent spleen free from fear of fallout. Indeed, he’d actually imagined just such an opportunity many times, both after he and Katherine had split up and, if he was honest, before.
    But that was not the case with Angelica. With Angelica, he thought, there was still much to lose. The situation was unsafe. It would be rash to be entirely himself.
    ‘Hello,’ he said.
    ‘Daniel,’ said Angelica. ‘What’s going on? Where are you?’
    ‘Where are you?’
    ‘I’m on my way home. Where are you?’
    ‘I’m …’ He wondered if he should lie, but it occurred to him that Angelica hadn’t actually said how far away she was, meaning she could walk in the front door any minute and catch him in the midst of saying he was out. ‘I’m at home.’
    ‘Well who answered your phone then?’
    ‘Katherine,’ he said.
    There was a moment’s