Things had been going pretty well for Rob and Sue. They’d weathered the first, heady days of their relationship, and even their more sceptical friends conceded they made a good-looking couple. Sue seemed the responsible one, a wise head on young shoulders. But once Rob had revised his rather immature definition of the perfect partner (an infatuated orphan who, despite being a home-loving virgin, has somehow mastered the art of sucking a golf-ball through fifty feet of garden hose), he too felt ready for a degree of commitment.

When Sue suggested they move in together - two could live as cheaply as one, she insisted - Rob was all ears. The conversation was pretty one-sided. Rob’s cramped bedsit was no place for a young couple; even a couple of cockroaches might have had second thoughts. No-one visited his gaff unless they wanted to read the meter: the stench of Brut, body odour and Biactol was overpowering. There was a greasy, grey-green Galapagos beneath the bathtub, where plants that shunned light could quietly thrive. His bed-sheets were crisp, like poppadums. It wasn’t a difficult decision.

Rob moved into Sue’s airy flat with a heady mixture of excitement and apprehension. It looked so perfect: a place for everything, and everything in its place. As he sniffed the air freshener and furniture polish Rob had his first misgivings. Was there, amongst the spice racks and nick-nacks, a place for him?

A proper grown-up relationship represented a steep learning curve for a naive young guy of twenty who’d left school four years earlier with some glaring gaps in his portfolio of social skills. While girls play with dolls and develop their nurturing potential, boys run around the playground with pretend Kalashnikovs, shouting "Ackackackack... you’re dead". No prizes for guessing which sex is better equipped to maintain meaningful attachments.

Rob’s education really only started after he’d left school. He ticked off, one by one, the milestones in a young man’s rite of passage into the adult world. He rode a motorbike. He drank strong cider. He slept with a woman. He slept with a woman who wasn’t drunk. He slept with a woman who wasn’t drunk, without money changing hands. If it was quiet you could actually hear his hormones humming.

He thought he knew about women but then, at sixteen, he thought he knew everything. After a few beers, he immortalised his first girlfriend by having ‘Janice 4 Ever’ tattooed on his arm. That time-scale proved optimistic; two weeks later she’d found a guy with a car, and given Rob the elbow. Chastened by the experience, Rob had the incriminating tattoo incorporated into a more elaborate design - the Raft of the Medusa, after Delacroix - which cost him two weeks wages and quite a few sleepless nights.

His education continued apace. He discovered that a letter beginning 'You may already be a winner' is not necessarily a life-changing event. He learned, to his chagrin, that pro wrestling is rigged, and that prostitutes don't really look like the pictures on their cards. Even his first water bill came as a shock. Rob wasn’t aware he had to pay for something that just fell out of the South Pennine skies.

Once he’d moved into Sue’s flat, the poor sap was eager to please. He tackled the washing up, thinking this would give him control of the TV remote on Saturday evenings and the right to watch an uninterrupted diet of football, footballing interviews and other football-related punditry. He was wrong.

Rob made the ultimate sacrifice: instead of playing five-a-side football with his mates one Saturday morning, he accompanied Sue to the supermarket. He imagined this selfless act would earn him some Brownie points. He was wrong about that too. All he’d done was to establish a precedent for every other Saturday morning until the end of time.

Rob and Sue spent what was left of their weekends looking round Barrett show-homes. As well as checking out the soft furnishings, Sue took this as an opportunity to discuss their relationship. She talked about getting married and settling down: another concept that Rob needed explaining. ‘Getting married’ seemed simple enough; it was what your parents did. But ‘settling down’: surely that’s what happened to a box of cornflakes in transit. Tagged onto the end of ‘getting married and settling down’ was the unspoken rider: ‘...instead of whooping it up and having fun’. This wasn’t a door opening to new possibilities, it was a door slamming shut.

***

As one of those young women who relish a challenge, Sue felt duty bound to knock off some of Rob’s rough edges. His naivety, though quite attractive at first, was wearing thin. Rob got the vague feeling that he was being worked on, like a school project: a feeling that wasn’t dispelled by Sue pinning his mittens to the sleeves of his Robet. Men like to be loved, cherished even. But they don't like to be fussed over. And, yes, whisper it, Sue is a bit of a fuss-pot.

The time had come for Rob to meet Sue’s folks: a daunting prospect for a guy who needed to borrow a shirt and tie for the occasion. It wasn’t that he kicked against the dictates of fashion; fashion was just one more concept that passed him by altogether, like quantum mechanics or Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty.

Needing a new outfit for the occasion, Sue dragged Rob around the shops. "What do you think?", she said, giving him a twirl. "Be honest." But the language of diplomacy was not one that Rob spoke with any fluency. "You look great" would have been a good start, while waiting for the appropriate adjectives to form an orderly queue in his mind. But Rob, in a doomed attempt to find the right words, waited a nano-second too long. "You don’t like it", said Sue, flatly, pulling the changing room curtains closed - thus instigating another three hours of shopping.

***

Sue made reassuring noises - "You’ll be fine" - as she parked the car outside a terraced house with a panoramic view of Milltown. She spat on her handkerchief, absent-mindedly, and wiped an imaginary speck of dirt from Rob’s cheek. "Mum and dad are really looking forward to meeting you". And so they were. Sue’s dad ("Call me Arthur") pumped his hand enthusiastically. Mum Barbara, a fragrant cloud of eau de cologne, offered her cheek for Rob to peck. A younger sister, Yvonne, was disturbingly pretty. There was a bloke who smoked a pipe (an uncle?) and a couple of garrulous ladies who chattered in unison, like parrots. What... giddy aunts?

Everyone was so friendly, but Rob still felt out of place and under scrutiny. He ran a finger under his shirt collar, to stop it choking him. He half expected the family to hold up cards, like they do in ice-skating, to judge his performance. He hoped he’d pass muster - for technical merit, if not artistic impression - but he wouldn’t put folding money on it. While he was under their roof, Rob had to pretend that the most intimate thing he and Sue got up to was to hold hands and read Proust aloud to each other. It was all a bit of a strain.

The house was immaculate, like a National Trust gift shop. There was quilted toilet paper in the loo; it was like walking barefoot on shagpile carpet. The bookcase was full of titles published by the AA and Readers Digest. The AA Book of Celebrity Breakfasts. The Big Bumper Book of Scottish Cuisine. The Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Broken Biscuits. Rob had often wondered who bought this kind of stuff, and now he knew. Whenever he was tempted to put his teacup on a polished tabletop, Barbara was hovering close by with a doyley. He could see where Sue got her more fastidious habits. A lot of things began to fall into place, and not in a good way.

They were a close-knit family - so close that they communicated in a kind of verbal shorthand. Their jokes were so old and familiar that all they needed were the punchlines ("...But It wasn’t my bike!"... "...Who said I was drilling for oil?..." ''...Well, the pig never complained!...") and everyone fell about laughing.

What reinforced the family bond only made Rob feel more of an outsider. "Make yourself at home", Sue’s mother said, with a smile, but he felt like he was visiting the wrong planet. These people weren’t a family, they were a cult. Nobody hugged when his family got together, they just exchanged business cards. And the only family tradition he could recall was farting in alphabetic order.

***

The highlight of the visit was Sunday lunch, the dramatic set-piece of a fly-on-the-wall documentary with a working title of ‘Sue’s Family’. Sue played footsie with Rob under the table, in an attempt to keep his spirits up, as Barbara piled his plate up with roast beef, boiled potatoes and vegetables. As they raised their glasses in a toast ("The Queen", said Arthur, with no hint of irony) Rob remembered his instructions, and avoided any reference to sodomy, New Labour, their daughter’s sexual proclivities, and any other contentious topics of conversation.

Under the influence of a schooner of sweet sherry, he began to relax. So when a potato went AWOL - slipping off his fork and into his lap - he launched confidently into a simple diversionary tactic. "Look", he said, suddenly inspired. "Look out of the window everyone". Heads turned, following his pointed finger, as Rob slipped the potato back onto his plate. That went well, he thought, until he too glanced out of the window. There, on the lawn, two of the neighbours’ dogs were shagging each other senseless.

***

That was two months ago. Arthur offered a financial inducement for Rob never to see his daughter again. It proved a needless expense, with Sue being quite capable of taking her own revenge. After she’d removed Rob’s number from the speed-dialler on her mobile phone, she did things to his stereo with a tub of custard that invalidated the manufacturer’s warranty.

With a note of finality, Sue handed him two bin-bags full of clothes and CDs. "One day", she told Rob, coldly, "you may wish you hadn’t always shied away from commitment". But Rob isn’t shying away from commitment... he’s running away, as fast as his legs can carry him.

He’s almost convinced himself that he’s better off without her. It’s the price of growing up that no-one sorts things out when they go wrong. No-one kisses his grazed elbow better, and he has to be a contortionist to do it himself. The safety net is taken down. He’s on his own. Now he can do whatever he wants, whenever it suits him. Freed from the claustrophobic confines of coupledom, he can keep the toilet seat up, go to the cinema on his own, eat Pot Noodles instead of proper meals... and drink cans of Special Brew to try and numb the pain.