I drink a lot of decaffeinated coffee. I used to drink a lot of what we call “real coffee” these days—six cups a day was nothing—but I was told it wasn’t good for me and so I weaned myself off. Nowadays I have maybe one cup a day when I get up or two if I’m feeling self-indulgent. I call the black stuff I drink the rest of the time “coffee” but it’s not really coffee, is it? There’s something missing. Some might say its most important component, the thing that makes it coffee in fact. But I say to the wife, “Do you want a coffee?” and she’ll say, “Yes,” and I’ll bring her a cup of the black stuff and we pretend; we go through the motions. 

Living the lie. How many of us do that or have done that at some point in our lives? We step through the routine of a normal life, a happy life. Often we don’t know we’re even doing it because we’ve not been paying attention. We say words and think that’s talking. One day F. was the most important person in my life and then one day—maybe it was in July 1989, who knows?—she wasn’t. When did that happen? How did that happen? But we cope, we make do, we offer up excuses and get on with it because getting out of it would be so much harder and who’s to say what we got into next time wouldn’t go sour every bit as easily?