In the years he was with Emma he sometimes wondered idly what life would be like if she weren’t around; not in a morbid way, just pragmatically, speculatively, because don’t all lovers do this? Wonder what he would be without her? Now the answer is in the mirror. Loss has not endowed him with any kind of tragic grandeur, it has just made him stupid and banal. Without her he is without merit or virtue or purpose, a shabby, lonely, middle-aged drunk, poisoned with regret and shame.
