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Finsbury Park when he met Lisa and the map suddenly vanished into a drawer.
    If Ed had kept a similar map for me, I reflected, it would have had just one lonely pink pin, for Jess, in Borough.
    Despite our different temperaments, though, Sam has always included me, always stood up for me. Sure, I don’t like the way he picks on my name. What’s wrong with being called Alan? It’s not as if I couldn’t make puerile jokes about him being called Sam Hunt. But he’s essentially a good person. I wouldn’t trust Sam with anyone else’s girlfriend, but I’d certainly trust him with mine.
    That said, Jess doesn’t think much of Sam – a feeling I fear might be reciprocated. She mocks me sometimes for having two lovers, which just shows how little she understands male friendships. Maybe she’s just jealous she doesn’t have an equivalent Sam of her own. She also thinks he’s a talented wastrel, which is probably true, and a misogynist, which is definitely untrue. If anything, Sam likes women too much. Certainly, he’s never cheated on anyone. He’s never deliberately led anyone on. He actually deludes himself far more than he deludes the willing victims he sleeps with. I’ve seen him genuinely surprised that he has, yet again, fallen head-over-heels in a fortnight and grown bored a week later.
    Sam’s problem is simple: he thinks too much. Take his tirade at his ex-girlfriend Lisa’s wedding as an example. All I could think was,
Thank God Jess isn’t on our table
. Jess is a terrifyingly clever barrister. She would have torn Sam’s head off. And mine, too, probably, by association. I mean, sure, you can be all cynical and clever about why people get married. You can shock vicars by using rude words. But where does that get you? Nowhere.
    I prefer not to analyse. Analysis can be saved for the spreadsheets in the office. Marriage is just something you do, astage you reach, like learning to drive or getting your first job or buying a flat. You get married and then you have to grow up and see a little less of your childhood friends. You certainly have to stop living with them. It’s awkward when you earn a lot more than them.
    I was planning on buying a flat with Jess soon. She’s been nagging me about it for ages, but I’d prefer it if the initiative came from me. Then I thought we’d get engaged – maybe when we went skiing next year – and settle down to start a family. It would make my parents happy, I think, to see their final son married. My mum has never been that keen on Jess but hopefully she’s given up holding out for anyone else by now. And, in any case, she’s broodier about having more grandchildren than most mothers are the first time round. As for me, I feel quietly content about the prospect – not heart-racing, adrenaline-pumping mad with excitement – but quietly content. And that is much more important.
    â€˜If you marry, you will regret it,’ wrote Kierkegaard. ‘If you do not marry, you will also regret it.’ But I can’t imagine ever regretting getting married because, you see, I
am
a swan, and I think Jess is, too. She is intelligent, beautiful and kind (and not nearly as fat as I know Sam likes to make out). I
want
to spend the rest of my life with one person. I
want
to go out for an evening and not endure the terrible stress of not knowing what will happen. I want never to have to lunge at vacant air again.
    Ultimately, then, I have a simple, old-fashioned idea of marriage: I will choose the girl, I will ask her and I will support her.
    At least, that is what I thought. That is how I imagined it until, two weeks after Lisa’s wedding, I ironed my shirt – my Thursday shirt – picked out a pair of Thursday socks and went to work in the expectation that everything would be the same when I came home again, just as I like it.
    But it wasn’t. It was all horribly