Therapy

the assets can be divided fifty-fifty. He said, “That’s not reasonable, that’s generous. The house is worth considerably more than the flat. ” I said I just didn’t want to be bothered with it any more. I told him I was going abroad for a few weeks. I don’t know how long it will take me to track down Maureen, or what I will do if I find her. I just know I have to look for her. I can’t stand the thought of spending the summer cooped up in this flat, taking calls from people I’m trying to avoid in case it’s her.
    I haven’t told Bede about my plan, in case he gets the wrong idea, though what the right idea would be I’ve really no idea. I mean I don’t really know what I want from Maureen. Not her love back, obviously — it’s too late for a Repetition. (Though I can’t stop myself from going over every bit of evidence that her marriage to Bede has grown cold — if it was ever warm — like the single beds, their row over her pilgrimage, the rather cool “Dear Bede” postcard, etc. etc.) But if not love, then what? Forgiveness, perhaps. Absolution. I want to know that she forgives me for betraying her all those years ago in front of the Nativity play cast. A trivial act in itself, but with enormous consequences. You could say that it determined the shape of the rest of my life. You could say it was the source of my middle-aged Angst. I made a choice without knowing it was a choice. Or rather (which is worse) I pretended that it was Maureen’s choice, not mine, that we split up. It seems to me now that I never recovered from the effect of that bad faith. It explains why I can never make a decision without immediately regretting it.
    I must try that on Alexandra next time I see her, though I’m not sure she’ll be pleased. I seem to have abandoned cognitive therapy in favour of the old-fashioned analytical kind, finding the source of my troubles in a long-repressed memory. It would be a consolation, anyway, to share that memory with Maureen, to find out how she feels about it now. The fact that she is nursing a fresh grief of her own makes me all the more anxious to find her and make my peace with her.
     
    Also in my mailjam was a draft script by Samantha filling out her idea for a kind of The People Next Door-meets-Truly, Madly, Deeply- meets- Ghost episode to end the present series. It wasn’t at all bad, but I saw at once what needed doing to it. She had Priscilla’s ghost appearing to Edward after the funeral. What must happen is that Priscilla appears to Edward immediately after her fatal accident, before anyone knows about it. He doesn’t think she is a ghost at first, because she tries to break it to him gently. Then she walks through a wall — the party wall — into the Davises’ house and back again, and the realization sinks in that she’s dead. It’s sad, but it isn’t tragic, because Priscilla is still there, in a sense. There’s even a kind of comedy in the scene. It’s very thin ice, but I think it would work. Anyway, I did a quick rewrite and sent it back to Samantha with instructions to try it on Ollie.
    Then I called Jake and listened meekly to ten minutes’ bitter recrimination for not returning his calls before I was able to tell him about my work on Samantha’s draft script. “It’s too late, Tubby,” he said flatly. “Clause fourteen applied weeks ago.” “Have they hired another writer, then?” I asked, bracing myself for a positive reply.
    “They must have,” he said. “They need an agreed script for the last episode by the end of the month at the latest.” I heard the creaking of his swivel chair as he rocked himself in it, thinking. “I suppose if they really went for this ghost idea, there might just be time,” he said. “Where will you be the next two weeks?”
    Then I had to break it to him that I was going abroad tomorrow for an indeterminate time and couldn’t give any phone or fax numbers where he could contact me. I held the phone away from my ear like they do in old comedy films while he swore. “Why d’you have to take a holiday now, for fuck’s sake?” I heard him exclaim. “It’s not a holiday,” I said, “it’s a pilgrimage,” and put the phone down quickly while he was still speechless.
    It’s extraordinary what a difference this quest for Maureen has made to my state of mind. I don’t seem to have any difficulty in making decisions any more. I no longer feel like the unhappiest man. Perhaps I never was — I had a