About a month ago, my friend Helen, who had lived in Norway for many years, succumbed to the pancreatic cancer with which she was diagnosed last year. I went to Lancaster to see Kitty and Wendy, who knew her before I did, to raise a glass or two in Helen's memory.
Memory: they recalled adventures we'd had together in much greater detail than I could remember, or could remember at all. I was shown a photograph of me and Helen in a strangely contorted drunken pose in a London hotel room, the circumstances of which I recall nothing.
Wendy surprised me by referring to the years when she imposed belittling conditions on meeting me. It had to be done secretly, and I had to leave her house before her estranged boyfriend, who lived with his parents, arrived to do something connected with the childcare. I was made to leave by the back door, in case he turned up early and saw me. Quite why I was subject to such draconian invisibility is still a mystery to me.
"I should have stood up for you a bit more," she said. I said nothing, but was thinking "you fucking well should have! Making me skirt round another man's insecurity? Thanks!" It was a relief, years later, to have her recognise how unfair that was on me.
From Lancaster, I went an hour or so on the train to where Trina lives. We went out dancing at an annual soul and house music do which has finally re-emerged after The Interruption. After the first, rather irritating rounds of being herded together for other people's social media, it developed into a good night. Quite flirty. By doing nothing at all, just dancing, I attracted the attention of a good-looking woman in a purple thigh-length dress, who inched closer tune by tune, at least during the times Trina wasn't on the dancefloor.
But the real attraction was Trina. I have two central difficulties with her. One is, I find her attractive, both in an everyday way, but also in a way that can slide into a physical attraction given the right amount to drink circumstances. Second, she's witty, without any of the strained, intellectual taint that often comes with people who are good with words. She makes me laugh, and we all know what that can lead to.
So how do I handle this, given that I've a girlfriend down here? I lie. I told Trina that Mel and I have drifted into friendship, that it's been mutually accepted and that we're being sensible adults about it.
Although there are signs that that state of affairs might be the case in the future, and it's true that I've lost interest in our sporadic sex, we still carry on like boyfriend and girlfriend. It's a selfish way of managing two women, but recognising that I'm doing something morally wrong is rarely enough to make me stop doing it.
Work grinds relentlessly on, like a white noise you can't switch off. I'm in the middle of eight days straight now. It's been five weeks now since I applied to go down to two days a week. On Thursday I was promised a meeting to discuss it "shortly." What's there to discuss? Either they agree to it or they don't.
