My love for Sharon was like a mental illness

As Sharon stooped to pour boiling water from the kettle into two mugs, I studied her back and wondered what, if anything, remained in me of the love I once had for her. Was there a residue somewhere? Or a stain? I pictured her back as it had been a dozen years earlier, tanned by the Sardinian sun and bisected by the thin turquoise strap of her bikini top.

My love for Sharon was more in the nature of a terrible mental illness than anything nourishing, and when it was at its height, we went away for a week to Santa Teresa Gallura, a quiet seaside town at the northern tip of the island. We stayed in a cool, family-run hotel with views from our window across the blue Strait of Bonifacio to the southern coast of Corsica, and looking the other way, down to the town beach. All week, Sharon wore a pair of bubble-gum pink flip-flops that came free with the latest issue of Cosmopolitan. She also had a new tattoo on that hard back, a blue ascending cherub, and she was obsessed about keeping it moistened with extra daubs of sun cream. On the plane out, I memorised two essential Italian phrases for going abroad with Sharon: lei è vegetarania — she is vegetarian, and puo tenere questi nella cassaforte? — can you keep these in the safe?

At that time Sharon was unhappy with her life and cried all the time. When we’d first met, she’d said to me, ‘All I want from you is a good time and an alarm clock.’ Now all she wanted from me was a listening ear while she listed and lamented the causes of her unhappiness, which were more recondite and various than the causes of the first world war.