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yesterday.” She pointed to the door. “I want you to find yourself a time machine like Michael J. Fox in
Back to the Future,
I want you to climb into it, switch on the controls and erase yourself from my history.”
    His newfound confidence began to falter. “But where will I go?”
    “I don’t care, but whichever stone you crawl under, you can take that one with you!” She pointed at me. It was the first time Meena had addressed me directly in months. She usually refused to acknowledge my existence in the hope I’d somehow dissipate, like an embarrassing fart from an elderly relative.
    “It’s not enough that you assassinate my character, now you’re having a go at my mates?” said Dan in my defense—although strictly speaking it wasn’t in my defense, he was just trying to score points now. “I thought you said you liked Duffy.”
    “Is there no limit to your feeblemindedness?” she said, as if addressing a mischievous five-year-old. “I can’t stand Duffy. He eats our food. Watches our TV. Uses our telephone.” I momentarily contemplated some sort of financial offering to make amends for the phone abuse, but all I had in my pockets was a twenty-pence piece and a Blockbuster video card. “I want you”—she pointed at me again—“and I want you”—she pointed at him—“out now!”
    “Well, I’m not going.” Dan crossed his arms defiantly. “This is my flat as much as it is yours. So if you want me out of your life so badly, you’d better start packing.”
     
    T hat was then. Before I moved in Dan and I were just equally non-achieving mates from the comedy circuit, but after twelve months together we were so similar it was scary. We liked the same films, TV, music and sitcoms. The only thing we differed on was relationships. While I had the steadiest of steady girlfriends, after Meena, Dan became a subscriber to what he called the Kebab Theory of Women—“A nice idea on a post-pub Friday night but not the sort of thing you want on the pillow when you wake up next day.” I couldn’t help but think that it was all an act to stop himself from getting hurt again, but as acts go it was remarkably convincing.
     
    D an didn’t seem to want to talk about Meena for the minute, so leaving the wedding invitation open on top of the bookcase next to my seat I disappeared to the kitchen and emptied the remains of a three-day-old jar of Ragu over a bowl of cold pasta and shoved it into the microwave. I watched impatiently as the bowl rotated in the oven, and thought about the wedding invitation. Meena was clearly rubbing it in—letting him know that she’d moved on and he hadn’t. Hell indeed had no fury like a woman scorned.
    Scratching his stomach absentmindedly Dan came into the kitchen, opened the fridge door and peered in. “There’s nothing to eat,” he said, rooting about. “Can I have that cheese you bought last week?”
    “No problem.” I threw a packet of cream crackers at him. “Have these as well.” I returned to staring at the microwave waiting for the ping. “Does it bother you that Meena’s getting married?”
    “No,” said Dan a little too quickly and then changed subjects. “What kind of cheese is this?”
    “Dunno,” I said. “Cheddar I think.” Dan didn’t want to talk about Meena and her impending nuptials when there were clearly more pressing topics to discuss like cheese. I didn’t blame him. He wasn’t made of stone, but it was pointless talking about something that he had no control over. He’d do his grieving in private and if he needed me to accompany him on an evening of Drinking and Forgetting down our local, the Haversham Arms, then accompany him I would.
    After what felt like a decade the microwave pinged and I made my way back to the living room with my steaming bowl of pasta. As Dan flicked between the weather report on BBC1 and a documentary on Channel Four about burglars in Leeds, I wondered if I should collect his opinion on The Proposal to