The arrangement ended and the friendship with her husband did not

We still get a coffee every few weeks. He was the husband. It ended almost two years ago, and the odd part is not that we kept in touch, it is that when we meet we talk about his work, my mother and a television series we both dislike, and the subject that introduced us has come up perhaps twice in all that time.

It was awkward for a while. There is no etiquette for it anywhere. She and I had finished things properly and warmly, and then there was this leftover friendship nobody had planned, and for about six months all three of us handled it slightly badly out of politeness.

Forty, the north shore, six years around this. Two arrangements. The first was a year and taught me nothing I could not have read in an afternoon. The second was three years and taught me most of what I actually know, including that the husband is not a hurdle, a chaperone or an audience, and that treating him as any of the three is the quickest route to the door.

What I want now is another long arrangement with people who talk to each other properly. I would rather see one couple every three weeks for years than fill a calendar with introductions.

I should say plainly that I am not offering friendship as a route to anything in either direction, and I know this post could be read that way. What happened with him happened afterwards and by accident.