Without any sense of fatigue, Philip repeated it: ‘What do you think is more truthful, a first impression, or an impression built over a long time?’
‘How do you mean?’ She placed her index finger on her lower lip and her thumb under her chin in a way she felt might give the impression of consideration. Philip seemed fooled.
‘Let’s say you meet Frank and the first thing you feel is that he’s, I don’t know, lecherous.’
‘I like him already. Is he tanned?’
‘But then let’s say you get to know Frank and it turns out he’s only lecherous because he’s desperately lonely and he can’t really get close to women, and so he’s — what’s the word? — overcompensating.’
‘Well that’s just far less attractive.’
‘So there’s the situation: who’s the real Frank — the sleazy one or the lonely one?’
The conversation was very quickly boring Jane, but she tried not to let him see it. ‘I think it’s possible to be both. Can’t he be both?’ Just then the lights and siren of an ambulance sped by on the street outside the restaurant, its syncopated whining receding into the night. She turned her head as it passed. Philip kept his eyes on the space between them, investigating, it seemed, the intricacies of the tablecloth.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But which is the more authentic one? Which one is more objectively the way it is?’
‘Honestly, Philip, that’s a matter of perspective.’ She finished her glass of wine and started helping herself to another.
‘Well, how about me?’ He was feeling emboldened now; he had something close to a conversation going and it didn’t involve her planning the children’s future or telling him when she’d be home.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your first impression of me.’
‘But you know that story, Philip.’
‘No.’ He shook his head, his grey hair wriggling as he did so. ‘I mean: is your impression of me now different to when you first met me, and which one, according to you, is the most accurate one…?’
She’d been listening, but she had lost her patience. She knew he was sometimes slow on social cues, but she’d never taken him for logically stupid. ‘That’s obvious, Philip. Of course I know you better now. I’ve spent sixteen years with you. I have lots of evidence from which to draw my conclusion, and so my opinion now is the accurate one. It’s the one closest to the truth.’