If you met someone else, I’d be jealous. Which makes me think you should be more jealous of my husband. Unbearably jealous.

Do you like that thought?

I like to matter – everyone wants to matter. Make a difference in the world. Be someone for whom someone else would live or die. I want you to want me, anyway.

I do want you.

I want you to want me more. Not to be able to go on without me.

Come on.

See, it’s your work. Your so-called work comes between you and me. You think you’re doing something more important than anything we could possibly be.

You want me to choose between my work and you?

See, you think you’re exceptional … that you’re better than the rest of us … to stay up here in your eerie and write your stuff … You and your philosophical muse.

Maybe you’re my muse.

Stop it.

Maybe I’ll dedicate the book to you.

Would you do that – really? Anyway, you’ll probably never finish your book.

Says who?

Says me. You’re too perfectionist. It’ll never be good enough for you. It’ll never be good enough for your idea of you. Because you have an idea of yourself. A lofty idea. Of what you should be. Even if you know it’s what you can’t be … It’s tragic in its way. But of course it’s comic, too. It’s laughable. That you could even dream of these things. Some … suburbanite.

You’re a suburbanite, too.

But I know I’m a suburbanite. I know my limits. I know what I can and cannot do.

Organisational management: is that what you can do?

And being a lover, maybe. Being your lover. Being the lover of a would be philosopher.

A muse, in other words. An organisational management muse.