The telephone was ringing.

I knew it was Bill. And I knew what he wanted from me.

I stretched across the other brown pillow, the old yellow novels, the strewn grey ashes, and I said:

‘Whitehead residence.’

‘There’s been another one. I need you here.’

I put down the telephone and lay back in the shallow ditch I’d dug myself among the sheets and the blankets.

I stared up at the ceiling, the ornate brocade around the light, the chipped paint and the cracked veins.

And I thought about her and I thought about him as St Anne pealed the dawn.

The telephone was ringing again, but I’d closed my eyes.

I woke in a rapist sweat from dreams I prayed were not my own. Outside trees hung in the heat, moping in willow pose, the river black as a lacquer box, the moon and stars cut from drapes up above, peeping down into my dark heart:

The World’s Forgotten Boy.

I hauled my tried bag from Dickens to the chest of drawers, across the threadbare flooring, pausing before the mirror and the lonely bones that filled the shabby suit in which I slept, in which I dreamt, in which I hid my hide.

Love you, love you, love you.

I sat before the chest of drawers upon a stool I made in college and took a sip of Scotland and pondered Dickens and his Edwin, me and mine, and all that’s thine:

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

I sang and hummed along:

One Day My Prince Will Come, or was it, If I’d Have Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake?

The lies we speak and the ones we don’t:

Carol, Carol, Carol.

Such a wonderful person:

All wanked out on my bathroom floor, on my back, feeling for the toilet paper.