Last night I had one of the oddest phonecalls and have still been deciphering it today.
I have an older friend, let's call her Jane. I'm a friend of the family and originally got to know her through her kids of my age when we were young. Later, when I moved for my first proper job, I rented a room at their house for a while and got to know her well. We've always stayed in touch directly since then. Her husband (let's call him John) is a nasty, manipulative man who makes his family miserable and seemed to enjoy goading and hurting them. He acted very magnanimously with me when I lived with them but I saw the way he was towards his wife and children (ever seen a grown man reduced to tears by his father in front of his girlfriend?) and never bought the act.
Finally last year, Jane filed for divorce. Her adult children were pleased and said she should have done it decades ago. Her H first refused to sign the papers and then decided to contest the divorce and force a court case. He's on his third set of solicitors, presumably because he wouldn't take the advice of the first two lots. They're still living together in the same house.
Jane has talked to me about her divorce several times when we've met up. Not in great detail but enough that I know the general picture. Her eldest son has been co-opted as a go-between for his parents (and somehow a witness in the impending court hearing?) and has also talked to me about this.
So, last night I get a phonecall from John out of the blue on an unknown mobile number. I didn't think he would even have my phone number and must have got it from Jane's address book or phone. He claimed that eldest son had suggested to him that he speak to me for advice about his divorce?! Huh?
(I am in the middle of a more amicable divorce at the moment. Not a pleasant experience but we're civil and have quickly worked out an agreement on money and access to kids. John's angle was that eldest son thought I could give him tips on resolving disputes civilly!)
I told John that he was better getting professional advice from his solicitors but he tried to persist with this odd notion that I should advise him. There were lots of leading questions which I either ignored or closed down ("you know that Jane has dragged eldest son into this now, dont you?") and baited comments he seemed to expect to draw me into conversation (telling me that lots of the points in Jane's petition were actually factually incorrect and expecting me to ask for more detail and so on).
I politely told him that there was nothing useful I could say. I expected any lawyer would tell him that if someone wanted a divorce, they would eventually get one. It was simply a matter of how much time, money and acrimony you wanted to spend on reaching a settlement. I then put the phone down and puzzled over what the hell the call had really been about or intended to achieve.
I figured that he was either trying to get me to tell him things that Jane had told me which might damage her case (not actually an awful lot in terms of personal detail - I know most of it from her children) or trying to make the wider family circle of friends more sympathetic to him ("two sides to every story, you know...").
Several times in the few minutes we were speaking, I left deliberate long spaces for John to fill and he did so as though he were reading from a script. I half wondered if he had a notebook with stock phrases ("two sides to every story", "I'm having to dispute the divorce because I don't think she knows what she's doing"). Both John and I work in roles with a heavy negotiation and mediation content. He's a shrewd operator and I don't believe that he often speaks without purpose or intention.
I decided not to call Jane straight back in case he was sitting there with her mobile phone, running through her address book. When I tried to call her today, the phone was off. I'm likely to see her over the weekend anyway as we're both going to the same local event so will mention it to her then. I don't really want to tell their eldest son as he is already over-involved in their divorce and I wonder if the "eldest son told me to ring you" claim is intended to result in me calling him up and asking why the hell he gave his dad my number. (I think he's been bullied enough in his life so far.)
Any thoughts on what else this man is playing at?