Michael

“I thought about Caroline sometimes when I was falling asleep, trying to tease out inconsistencies. She was a low-level irritant, a gnat with inflated ideas about itself, a football team I would not wear the scarf of even if caught in a freak blizzard. The facts of her scraped against my nerves. She detested Wordsworth yet she was a terrific fan of psychoanalysis? That didn’t work. She did not believe in umbrellas – they were a suburban invention; well, she could take it from me that they existed. She thought women with a sweet tooth trivialised themselves. What, all of them? (Jean would have to curb her cake habit – why should she?) She objected to English people who hadn’t grown up in London. She despised the word ‘very’ because it de-intensified and people didn’t realise. Couldn’t countenance pelmets. She liked scuffed brogues, left-overs, pinstripes, neat whisky, old Soho, the squeak of tulip stalks, tomato sandwiches for every meal (she’d stolen that straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald). She said a femme fatale should have a laugh that was alluring and dismissive. She loved all swear words except ‘Christ!’ – which was blasphemous.”
― Susie Boyt, Loved and Missed