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By Root 640 0

her so well. The very things that used to annoy me to despair now delight me. There's nothing she does that surprises me – even when she's trying to catch me off guard. The very things that irritated the life out of me, now that I'm far away, amuse me, fill me with compassion, even affection. When I'm at the house, I look at her, I know her every gesture. It was the same with my father’ – Uncle Jack, added Avery – ‘if we went to a restaurant for dinner and there was a choice of potato – every time, every single time – when the waitress asked if he wanted boiled or mashed, roasted or fried, he would hesitate, take serious pause, as if he were really ruminating on the possibilities and, of course – every time, every single time – after a long, expectant silence, he'd say, “Mashed.” As if there really was the possibility of him saying otherwise. For nearly twenty years this drove me mad. Now it is one of the fondest memories I have of him. And if you ask me,’ said Owen, ‘that is the greatest secret in life. That's what we're really saying when we're carping on about love. That's who he was, you see; that's who Miri is, you see? And it has nothing whatsoever to do with me!’

Owen was giggling, practically cackling with glee.

‘When I think of how angry I used to be,’ Owen continued, ‘what a waste of time. And when Miri parts her lips to begin a harangue – against that bad taxi driver who offended her on the way to the shops two years before, or the bank teller or the woman in committee number one hundred and four – all the strangers who upset her so, and with whom she rarely crosses paths twice – when she begins to rant, now I feel flooded with love for her, real sympathy and affection, and I can shake my head and tsk-tsk and pat her hand to soothe her, knowing at last that's all she wants me to do – that's all she ever wanted me to do. Ah,’ said Owen, giggling again, ‘I'm so happy now!’

Then he scrutinized me. Avery leaned back and narrowed his eyes in imitation.

‘It's just the same with you,’ Owen said. ‘All those years ago when we were students, whenever we met you looked at me so earnestly, so seriously, and you asked me how I was. It always unnerved me. Now I see that what you were really asking was not “how are you?” but “are you in love?” That's all you really wanted to know about, and you were right, it's the same question. Now I see it, I look into your eyes even now and I see you were right, twenty years later. And now, whenever I think of you that's what I'll remember and it will make me smile. That's all we need to do in this life – find the single feature in each friend, the one really essential quality and then love them for it. When my mother checked to make sure the door was locked, even after she'd already checked a dozen times, even when she was at last sitting in the front seat of the car, in her place in the passenger seat next to my indulgent father, still she always had to get out and check the door one more time – and it wasn't good enough to watch my father do it, she had to do it herself. How that set my teeth on edge, I'd wait in the backseat literally grinding my jaws together. But she'd grown up with nothing and now she had a nice house full of nice things – of course she would have to make sure the door was locked again and again. Who in their right mind would trust such luck? The important thing is not that she checked the lock, but that she was once so poor and she never, never forgot it. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by that. Think of all the anger I wasted on locks when I should've been thinking about poverty.

‘But that's just the way it is with the truth, it's never in the same room with you, it's never in the backseat with you, it's never there when you need it. It always bobs up years later like a waterbird that dives in one part of the lake and pops up in another. You grab for the truth with both hands and it pops up behind you …

‘And now I'm late. I'm meeting a woman at a restaurant in the country and it's at least an hour's drive.’

Owen got into his car and was