At the washing line

It's Sunday, late afternoon, and you're hanging out washing.

Your hands know the job, so your mind is free, and into the free space comes the photocopier. It was eleven years ago. A colleague's father had died, and she'd been off for two weeks. On her first morning back you met her at the photocopier. You wanted to say something kind. What came out was, "Well, at least it was quick."

You see her face again. It didn't crumple or harden. It went blank, in the way of someone who is deciding to be polite. She said, "Yes," and picked up her copies and went. You stood there with the machine humming.

At the washing line you go through it from the start. You see the corridor, her coming towards you, and the half-second in which you chose the words. You try out the things you might have said. "I'm so sorry about your dad." That would have done. It was there to be said, and you didn't say it. You get to her face again, and then to "Yes". You make a small noise out loud, something between a groan and a word, and you peg a towel harder than it needs. Then the washing is done and you go inside, and it fades.

She left the firm nine years ago. You've no idea where she is now. If you had to put a number on it, you've been through that scene about four hundred times.

You may not have a photocopier. Yours might be a wedding speech, an email sent to the wrong person, or a thing you shouted at your mother. It might be much larger. It could be the flat you sold two years before prices doubled, a job you turned down, or a relationship you let go of, or stayed in too long. It could be something you did to another person that was plainly wrong. This book is meant for all of these, though the larger ones get chapters of their own later on. For now the small one will do, because the small ones show the habit most clearly. Nobody could say that a clumsy sentence from eleven years ago needs four hundred hearings. It gets them all the same.

I'll use a few terms. The event is what happened, which took about eight seconds and ended eleven years ago. A replay is one spell of going over it, from the moment it arrives in your head until something breaks it off. The ending is the point every replay arrives at. In this case it's her face and "Yes".

Replays have some regular features. This list is my own observation and not a research finding.

They arrive uninvited, and mostly when your mind is idle. You might be in the shower, in the car, in bed or at the washing line. You didn't decide to think about the photocopier. It came up while you were thinking of nothing in particular.

They're repeats. It's the same scene, in the same order, with the same ending. If a friend described watching a recording four hundred times in the hope that the final score would change, you'd be worried about them.

Your body joins in. You flinch, or groan, or say something out loud, or your face goes hot. The event is eleven years old and the shame is fresh each time.

And they don't finish. A replay never ends with "right, that's settled". It ends because the phone rings, or the washing's done, or you fall asleep. It gets interrupted, and an interruption leaves the thing open for next time.

That last feature is the one I'd most like you to keep in mind. If replays were a way of working something out, they'd reach a result now and then. Four hundred of them have reached the same blank face.

Before chapter 2, if you're willing, make a short list. Write down the three or four events that come back most often. For each, put roughly how long ago it happened and a rough guess at how many times you've been through it. Then, beside each one, write down anything the most recent replay told you that you didn't know before. You don't need to do anything about the list. I expect that last column will be empty, and I'd like you to see that for yourself instead of taking my word.