Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell

Hong Kong, but they had no friends. So geared is society to an eating-and-drinking-together ethos, and eating was something they were obliged to avoid in public, that they were unable to keep friends or make new ones. One by one, people they knew drifted away when their invitations were refused and they were never themselves invited. Michelle’s greatest dread had been that somehow they would be obliged to accept a summons to tea or supper and Matthew, confronted by butter or a jug of milk or pot of honey, would turn white and begin that dreadful dry retching. Better repulse people than risk it.
    She had only one confidante. And that confidante had become a friend. One day, nearing despair and terrified that he couldn’t go on much longer, she had sat in her kitchen with Fiona, while Matthew worked slowly and feebly at his computer, and told her everything. And instead of laughing at a middle-aged man who couldn’t eat and a middle-aged woman who couldn’t stop eating, Fiona had sympathized, seemed to understand, and even suggested remedies. She’d lived on such a varied diet, such novel and
sophisticated
food, she had all sorts of ideas for an anorexic who’d like to eat if only he could. A year later, which was last year, Michelle told Fiona that she’d saved Matthew’s life and they would both be eternally grateful.

    When they got back from Waitrose to their house in Holmdale Road, West Hampstead, Michelle set about preparing Matthew’s lunch. It was to include several of the foodstuffs Fiona had suggested and that Matthew found acceptable.
    “Peanuts!” Fiona had said. “Very nourishing, are peanuts.”
    Matthew managed to utter the word “greasy.”
    “Not at all. Dry-roasted peanuts. Delicious. I love them.”
    It would be an exaggeration to say that so did he. He loved no kind of food but he tolerated dry-roasted peanuts, as he tolerated her other suggestions: crispbread, Pop Tarts, madeira cake, hard-boiled eggs chopped up with parsley, Parmesan cheese grated to a powder. Baby spinach leaves and arugula, Japanese rice crackers, muesli. Over that year, his health improved a little and he was slightly less emaciated. Since then, though, the Pop Tarts, which were the most caloric on the list, had fallen from favor. He couldn’t help it. With all his heart, he wanted to go on liking them but it was no good. Fiona recommended sponge fingers and short-bread instead.
    Michelle put a lettuce leaf on his plate, twelve dry-roasted peanuts, a slice of hard-boiled egg with powdered Parmesan, and a piece of Ryvita. She hoped, too, that he would drink the small wineglassful of pineapple juice but she wasn’t banking on it. While she decorated his plate with these scraps, she ate peanuts herself and the rest of the egg and a hunk of olive bread with butter. Matthew smiled at her. It was his way of not looking at his plate, to turn his head away from it and smile at her as he thanked her.
    “I just saw Jeff Leigh go by,” he said, picking up one peanut. “Is he never going to get a job?”
    Neither of them much cared for Fiona’s boyfriend. “I’d so much like to think he wasn’t with her for her money,” said Michelle. “I’d like to think he was disinterested, darling, but I don’t. He expects her to keep him and that’s the truth of it.”
    “Fiona likes to be in control. I don’t mean to criticize. To some it would be a compliment. She may want him to be dependent on her.”
    “I hope you’re right. I want her to be happy. They’re getting married in June.”
    Matthew ate another peanut and a fragment of Ryvita. Michelle had long ago mastered the art of not watching him. He sipped the juice. “I’m afraid her friends won’t think much of him if he does nothing and lets her keep him. He seems to have some skills. He’s done a few useful jobs about the house for Fiona, putting in an electric outlet for one, and if you remember, he was something of a wizard on the computer when he came in here to