Unravelling Oliver

don’t have to love a person. You can love the idea of a person. You can idealize them and turn them into the person you need. Alice loved the person that she thought I was.

My wife, I had always thought, was a mouse, but now she had sharpened claws and revealed a feline arrogance I had never seen before.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, but often it is in fact boredom.

. I wonder if he ever truly cared about me. Or her.

Maybe I should have been nicer to Alice and maybe I shouldn’t have slept with her husband for nearly twenty years, but a small part of me wishes that the fight was about me.

Yes, yes, I was cheating on Con, Oliver was cheating on Alice, but I thought we were cheating exclusively, and that we meant something to each other.

I bit my tongue and agreed about what a little treasure Alice was as I draped my leg around his neck.

It was infuriating, actually, how easily he could sing her praises and kiss me hungrily all in the same minute.

He is a dentist. He earns a lot of money. He spends his working life looking into small, enclosed spaces filled with rot and decay. It genuinely interests him.

I do not mean to sneer at Alice. She made everything possible. Alice was always loyal. It is a wonderful quality in a wife.