Therapy

remembered so well. “It had better be,” she said. “I’m sure I stink to high heaven.”
    She sighed and stretched out luxuriously in the front seat of the Richmobile as we moved off down the highway with the silent speed of an electric train. “Well, this is very swish,” she said, looking round the interior of the car. “What make is it?” I told her. “We have a Volvo, at home,” she said. “Bede says they’re very safe.”
    “Safety isn’t everything,” I said.
    “No, it isn’t,” she said, with a little giggle.
    “This is a dream come true, you, know,” I said. “I’ve been fantasizing for months about driving you in this car.”
    “Have you?” She gave me a shy, puzzled smile. I didn’t tell her that in my fantasies she was still in her teens.
    A few kilometres further on we found a bar with some chairs and tables outside in the shade of an old oak, away from the jabber of television and the hiss of the coffee machine. Over a beer and a citron pressé we had the first of many conversations that slowly filled in the information gap of thirty-five years. The first thing Maureen wanted to know, naturally enough, was why I had sought her out. I gave her a condensed account of what I have already written in these pages: that my life was in a mess, personally and professionally, that I had been suddenly reminded of our relationship and how shabbily I had treated her at the end of it, and had become consumed with a desire to see her again. “To get absolution,” I said.
    Maureen blushed under her sunburn. “Goodness me, Laurence, you don’t have to ask for that. It was nearly forty years ago. We were children, practically.”
    “But it must have hurt, at the time.”
    “Oh, yes, of course. I cried myself to sleep for ages “There you are, then.”
    “But young girls are always doing that. You were the first boy I cried over, but not the last.” She laughed. “You look surprised.” “You mean, Bede?” I said.
    “Oh no, not Bede” She screwed up her face in a humorous grimace. “Can you imagine anybody crying over Bede? No, there were others, before him. A wildly handsome registrar I was hopelessly in love with, like every other student nurse at the hospital. I doubt if he even knew my name. And after I qualified there was a houseman I had an affair with.” “You mean... in the full sense of the word?” I stared incredulously.
    “I slept with him, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know why I’m telling you all these intimate details, but somehow the older you get, the less you care what people know, don’t you find? It’s the same with your body. In hospital it’s always the young patients who are most embarrassed about being washed and bedpanned and so on. The old ones couldn’t give a damn.”
    “But what about your religion?When you had the affair.”
    “Oh, I knew I was committing a mortal sin. But I did it anyway, because I loved him. I thought he would marry me, you see. He said he would. But he changed his mind, or perhaps he was lying. So after I got over it I married Bede instead.”
    “Did you sleep with him first?” The question sounded crude as I formulated it, but curiosity overcame good manners.
    Maureen rocked with laughter. “Good heavens, no! Bede would have been shocked at the very idea.”
    I pondered these surprising revelations in silence for a few moments. “So you haven’t been bearing a grudge against me all this time?” I said at length.
    “Of course not! Honestly, I haven’t given you a thought for... I don’t know how many years.”
    I think she was trying to reassure me, but I was hurt, I have to admit. “You haven’t followed my career, then?” I said.
    “No, should I have done? Are you terribly famous?”
    “Not famous, exactly. But I’ve had some success as a TV writer. Do you ever watch The People Next Door ?”
    “Is that a comedy programme — the kind where you can hear a lot of people laughing but you can’t see them?”
    “It’s a sitcom, yes.”
    “We tend to avoid those, I’m afraid. But now I know you write for it... ”
    “I write all of it. It was my idea. I’m known as Tubby Passmore,” I said, desperate to strike some spark of recognition.
    “Are you really?” Maureen laughed and wrinkled her nose. “Tubby!”
    “But I’d rather you called me Laurence,” I said, regretting the revelation. “It reminds me of the old days.”
    But from then on she called me Tubby. She seemed delighted with