Therapy

one-mile radius of the place. That particularly annoys him because it means he can’t try and follow her when she leaves work to find out where she’s living. He’s been keeping watch on the tennis coach’s house, but so far no luck. He says it’s only a matter of time before he catches them. I think he means in flagrante. Heaven knows what he thinks he’s going to do if he does catch them. Laurence would hardly be a match for a tennis coach if it came to blows...
     
    Well, it seems that Sally wasn’t having an affair after all, not with the tennis coach anyway. Apparently he’s gay. Yes. Well, I must admit I had a job not to laugh myself, when Laurence told me. I don’t know exactly how he found out, he was a bit evasive on the phone, but he seemed quite certain. He sounded very low, too, poor sweet. As long as he suspected the tennis coach he had a target for his anger and resentment. You can’t hate someone if you don’t know who they are. Anyway, I suspect he’s beginning to think that Sally may have been telling the truth after all, about why she wanted a separation — that she just couldn’t bear living with him any more. It hasn’t done anything for his self-esteem. I remember when I found out about Janine, I was a tiny bit secretly relieved as well as absolutely furious, because it meant that I needn’t blame myself for the failure of the marriage. Or not entirely.
    Another depressing development for Laurence is that his children know about the split now. I think that’s a kind of Rubicon as far as he’s concerned. As long as they didn’t know, there was always the possibility that he and Sally might get back together again with no serious damage done, no embarrassment, no loss of face. When Sally walked out the last thing he said to her — he told me he ran down the drive after her car and banged on her window to make her wind it down — the last thing he said was, “Don’t tell Jane and Adam.” Of course they had to know sooner or later. Sally probably told them almost immediately, but Laurence has only just found out that they know. He’s had phone calls from both of them. They’re being very careful not to take sides, but the main thing that’s struck him is that they don’t seem to be terribly upset or even terribly surprised. It’s obvious to me that Sally must have been confiding in them for some time and preparing them for what’s happened. I think this is beginning to dawn on Laurence, too. “I feel as if I’ve been living in a dream,” he said, “and I’ve just woken up. But what I’ve woken up to is a nightmare.” Poor Lorenzo. Speaking of dreams, I had a very peculiar one last night...
     
    Well, it’s happened, I knew it would, I could see it coming: Laurence wants to sleep with me. Not just to hold me. For sex. The beast with two backs. It was one of Saul’s expressions, don’t pretend you’ve never heard it before, Karl. It’s in Shakespeare somewhere. I can’t remember which play, but I’m sure it’s in Shakespeare. Well, it’s no odder than most of the other available phrases. “Sleep with,” for instance. I knew a girl once, called Muriel, who used to say she was sleeping with her boss when she meant that she had it off with him in the back of his Jaguar in Epping Forest during their lunch hour. I shouldn’t think they got much sleep.
    Laurence raised the subject over dinner last night. I suppose I should have been forewarned when he took me to Rules instead of our usual trattoria. And encouraged me to order the lobster. It was just as well we were eating early and the restaurant was half-empty, otherwise people would have been falling off their chairs trying to listen in. He said the only reason he hadn’t tried to make love to me before was because he believed in fidelity in marriage, and I chipped in tout de suite to say that I quite understood and respected him for it. He said it was very generous of me to take that view but he felt he had been exploiting me in a way, enjoying my company without any commitment, and that now Sally had walked out on him there was no reason why we should inhibit ourselves any longer. I said that I didn’t feel at all exploited, or inhibited for that matter. Not quite as bluntly as that, of course. I tried to explain that I valued our relationship precisely because there were no sexual strings to it, hence no tension, no anxiety, no jealousy. He looked very dejected and said, “Are you saying you don’t