Therapy

keys one day when he was in the flat and I was in the loo — I used to keep a spare set hanging in the kitchen. Or perhaps he just borrowed them once without my noticing. Apparently they arrived one morning in a removal van and had the cheek to ask the police for special permission to park outside the building while they moved the contents of my flat to some spurious new address.
     
    When I stepped into the flat and looked round, after half a minute of mouth-open astonishment, I laughed. I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks and I had to lean against the wall and finally sit down on the floor. The laughter was a touch hysterical, no doubt, but it was genuine.
    If this was a television script, I would probably end it there, with the final credits scrolling over the empty flat, and yours truly sprawled in one corner, his back against the wall, weeping with laughter. But that happened several weeks ago, and I want to bring this story up to date, up to the moment of writing, so that I can carry on with my journal. I’ve been very busy working on The People Next Door. Ollie and Hal really loved my rewrite of Samantha’s script for the final episode of the last series. It went down a treat with the studio audience too, apparently. (I wasn’t there, it was recorded on 25th July, the feast of St James.) And Debbie was so taken with playing Priscilla as a ghost that she changed her mind and signed up for a whole new series based on the idea. I’m writing the scripts, but Samantha will get a prominent credit, which is only fair. She’s become Heartland’s number one script-doctor in a very short time. I had a bet with Jake at lunch today that she’ll have Ollie’s job before two years are out.
    Jake wasn’t very sympathetic about my burglary. He said I was insane to have ever trusted Grahame, and pointed out that if I’d let him use the flat as his love-nest while I was away, Grahame and his mates wouldn’t have dared to loot it. But I was able to refurnish the flat quite quickly — the insurance company were very fair — and I never liked the original furnishings much anyway. Sally chose them. It’s been like starting a new life from scratch, replacing everything in the flat. It’s too small to live in permanently, though. I’m thinking of moving out to the suburbs, Wimbledon to be precise. I see quite a lot of Maureen and Bede these days. It would be nice to be near them, and I thought I might try to join the local tennis club — I always did fancy wearing that dark green blazer. I went up to Hollywell the other day to empty my locker at the old Club. A slightly melancholy occasion, brightened by the circumstance that I ran into Joe Wellington and challenged him to a game of singles for a tenner. I beat the shit out of him, 6-0,6-0, rushing the net after every serve and scampering back to the baseline when he tried to lob me. “What about your knee?” he gasped afterwards. “Just pay up with a smile, Joe,” I said. “Reason not the knee.” I don’t think he recognized the quote.
    I have my eye on a nice little house up the hill from the All England Club. I shan’t give up the flat, though. It’s useful for business to have a base in the West End; and every now and then Maureen and I have a siesta here. I don’t ask her how she squares it with her conscience — I’ve got more sense. My own conscience is quite clear. The three of us are the best of friends. We’re going off together for a little autumn break, actually. To Copenhagen. It was my idea. You could call it a pilgrimage.
     

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
     
    Changing Places
    The plate-glass, concrete jungle of Euphoria State University, USA, and the damp red-brick University of Rummidge have an annual exchange scheme. Normally the exchange passes without comment. But when Philip Swallow swaps with Professor Zapp the get involved, and the two academics find themselves enmeshed in a spiralling involvement on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Nobody is immune: students, colleagues, even wives are swapped as the tension increases. Finally, the cat is let out of the bag with a flourish that surprises even the author himself.
    ‘Not since Lucky Jim has such a funny book about academic life come my way’ — Sunday Times
     
    Small World
    Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle, the lovely Angelica — the jet-propelled academics are on the move, in the air and on the make...
    ‘Infightings, couplings touching, funny and frightful,