1 - Stitching

Stitching

R E Hoskins

I went there not really expecting much, not really knowing anyone, alone. I saw the guy whose party it was and raised a hand to say hello, but he just flicked his head back and pointed his chin, like he'd forgotten who I was. Not a great start, but I couldn't walk straight back out again, that would have made me look stupid, so I went to the beer table and grabbed a can, necked it, ate some peanuts, grabbed another can and walked to a quiet corner where I would stand for the right amount of time before I left. The right amount of time, in case you're wondering, is until everyone has forgotten you're there.

I was on my third beer when she walked in.

She just looked fucking amazing. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. So maybe you would think that's a bit much, maybe you wouldn't think the same, maybe you would think she was just normal, ordinary, not that pretty, not ugly either, but nothing special — but I'd never seen anyone so beautiful. It wasn't that, though, that made me look at her. It wasn't her hair, her eyebrows, her eyes or cheekbones or mouth, her tits or the shape of her body, her legs, the clothes she wore... It wasn't any of that, but it was everything, all of it together was just right, just how I liked it, though some, maybe most of it I'd never even thought about before. I mean, it's not often men sit around thinking about these things, or talking about them. We might say 'that so and so, she's got a great arse' or 'look at the tits on her!', but that's it. You're not going to hear something like 'how do you like your eyebrows, mate? I like 'em arched, quite high, but thin, oh and I prefer squareish fingers and fleshy earlobes'. But I took in all these things and more in the time it took her to walk into the room and for me to say to myself 'fuck me!' And I liked every bit of her, even though some of it was wrong.

Then she looked at me, not just a quick butcher's, a real look, straight in the eyes, a look that didn't just stay there a bit — it stuck, and I can still see it, and it was like she was saying "Where the fuck have you been?"

It stuck, and I felt something thump around my body, limb to limb, in my chest, my stomach, my arms and legs — everywhere, like I'd just taken something or crashed the car. You would expect at a time like that that I would freeze, not know what to do or say. Looking back, I would have expected it too, but I didn't sit there with my mouth open like an idiot; I walked right up to her and I spoke. It doesn't much matter what I said right then. What matters is that I spoke, that she answered, that we found each other.

We didn't sleep that night. It's not what you're thinking, we didn't go off and shag like I might have done before. We just sat down and talked, and before we knew it the hosts of the party, birthday boy and his girlfriend, were cleaning up in an exaggeratedly noisy kind of way, wiping things and throwing beer cans into plastic bags hard enough to make them rattle and spit back gobbets of beer and soggy fag ends, and looking at us with an unmistakable 'why don't you shut up and fuck off' in their eyes. So we left. It was maybe four in the morning, a Sunday, and the day was just beginning. A few birds were singing, and we stood in the street in the half light for a while, not wondering anything really, just not knowing which direction we should take, until we started walking slowly up the street, and she held my hand.

It was right, that hand in mine. I'd never known a hand to be right before. That's something else you don't think about often, isn't it? I mean, you hold lots of hands and you never think "Wow, this hand feels right" or "Shit, our hands don't fit". Well, maybe you do, but I never had before. I suppose the temperature was right, so our palms weren't cold but didn't get sticky together either, sticky in that way that you have to keep letting go and wiping yours down your jeans while she takes out a hanky and dries her own —ours stayed together. And the height was right as well, so that my arm kind of just dangled there, with a neat junction to her hand, dovetailed. We were in step too, right away, which was odd because she had quite short legs and mine are long, but right away we took on a rhythm walking together, I felt it like it was some kind of dance — a very basic one, true, but we were good.

We found a park and sat on a bench. There were some drunks around, and a guy in a boiler suit sweeping leaves up — well, just moving them around really — and he looked at us, without much expression, and said nothing.

We didn't talk in the park; we just sat there curled up together and she had her head on my chest — to be honest it wasn't very comfortable — until she said "I'm hungry" and we went off and found a greasy cafe and had a greasy breakfast — our first meal together. She was a delicate eater, and I remember thinking that the way she held her knife, like a pencil, kind of irritated me, and I wanted to say "Why do you hold your knife like that? It's fucking stupid", but I didn't, I kept my mouth shut, and after a while it didn't irritate me so much and I began to think everyone should hold their knife like that. I thought it was great. And she ate her baked beans one by one — seriously, one by fucking one. It was no surprise that I was finished before she'd got through her beans, and then she started on the eggs. She ate everything in sequence, kind of, beans first, then the eggs, then the bacon, then sausage, then mushrooms, then toast, nothing on it. I asked her about this; I said: "Why do you eat everything in sequence like that?"

She wasn't surprised. She just shrugged her shoulders and said: "Because I fucking do."

I laughed like a hyena; I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard, the way she said it. It's like, she had this really soft voice, and to that point she'd never said a swear word to me, not even bloody or bugger or anything, like she wouldn't say boo to a goose, you know. Then she came out with that — perfect timing.

She smiled at me and said: "I'm tired." And we went back to her place, had sex, and went to sleep. She only had a single bed, but it was alright, she was small anyway, and like the hands, our bodies fit nicely together too, and we lay in bed through most of the day, falling in and out of sleep, having more sex, trying different positions, and they were all good, all comfortable.

So we didn't say anything about it, or make any plans or anything, but we started going out. Well, we stayed in mostly. Neither of us had much money. I was on the dole and she was starting a new job in a couple of months. She'd not been in town long, either, and she had no friends yet, so we just hung out at her place. She had this bedsit, a fair sized, square room with faded white walls, covered with marks and tiny holes everywhere where people had put up their favourite pictures. The only picture she had was a photo of her with a dog. She was young, maybe 14, and the dog was brown. They were both smiling at the camera.

"His name was Buster," she told me. "He died."

I thought that was a shame, because he looked like the cheerful type, the type that would get so excited when it saw you, wag its tail so hard that its body would wag too, bumping up against your leg as it walked around you as though looking for a way in.

The photo was stuck on the wall above her bed. Apart from the bed there was a wooden chair by the big sash window, positioned so you could look out at the street two storeys below, where I would sit and smoke with the window open because she didn't like the smell, and a second chair that was used most often as a telly stand. And there was a sink in one corner with a mirror over it where she'd wash.

We didn't go to mine because I was in a shared house and I didn't get on with the others. There was this southern shit who particularly pissed me off so that I thumped him once. But he deserved it. After I did that they all had a meeting without me and voted to have me thrown out. But the landlord just said: "Sort it out yourselves, you twats, but you'll have to pay his share of the rent." And they couldn't find anyone else to move in because it was a shit hole and they were twats, like he said, so they just kind of forgot about it, but they didn't speak to me much.

Anyway, me and Alice— her name was Alice, her mum and dad called her that because she was conceived in Alice Springs. I said "Did your folks shag at Waga Waga too? You might have the wrong name." She laughed at that and so I started calling her Waga Waga all the time until she got sick of it and told me to fuck off. I suppose I deserved it, but I was pissed off and didn't speak to her for ages. I just sat at the window, smoking fags and being pissed off until she started crying. I felt bad about that so I said sorry and we had sex and it was alright, though she was still snivelling a bit.

Alice and me would hang out in her bedsit and she would read books and twiddle her hair around her finger, and I would watch the telly — she had this little portable black and white job — and every now and then we'd have sex again, or if she didn't fancy it she'd give me a hand job. After a couple of months were up she started her new job. She'd get up early and I'd watch her getting dressed. She only had two outfits for work — two dark skirts and two jackets, and a bunch of white blouses. It was like a uniform, really, but she looked smart enough and quite pretty. She worked as a secretary, and her boss liked her to be in early so that she was there when he walked in and could make his tea and stuff. I thought he sounded like a bit of a cunt, actually. She would get dressed and try to check herself out in the mirror above the sink, but then she would always ask me if she looked OK. I didn't really know what to say, unless her arse was hanging out of her skirt, which never happened. She just looked like she was wearing clothes and she looked fine to me, so I just said "You look great, babe," or something like that. Then she'd leave and I'd go back to sleep for a while.

I did pretty much the same things when she was at work as I had when she was there, except I could wander about a bit when I was smoking, and if I felt like having sex I'd wank. I got bored a lot, though, so I'd be happy when I heard her coming up the stairs and opening the door, and we'd be all lovey dovey and have sex and then lie on the bed and talk about her day.

She started bringing bits of material back. There was a market near where she worked, and she found this stall that sold cloth by the yard, for making clothes and the like, I suppose. She bought a couple of yards of this deep red cloth first. I don't know what she wanted to make out of it, if anything. She didn't have a sewing machine, though she did have this tiny sewing kit that she kept under the bed in her jewellery box. Next day she came back with this gold coloured cloth. I said: "What the fuck's this about?" She smiled at me, draped the red one over one shoulder, the gold one over the other. She said: "You have to think of the possibilities, Peter."

She didn't buy material every day, but at least twice a week she came home with some — white, blue, yellow, striped, plain, patterned — you fucking name it, she fucking bought it. She would get me to hold the cloth up so she could look at it, but I got pissed off with this after a while and volunteered to pin it on the wall. She liked that, so soon every wall in the place was dripping with strips of material. There was no order to it. I just found a space and pinned up the latest bit. It was like living inside Joseph's technicolour fucking dreamcoat — the noisiest thing to look at, but at the same time, it was the quietest place to live. She could scream all she liked when we had sex, and if I shouted at her from one end of the room, the words got to her at the other end like a whisper. They soaked up words, those pieces of cloth — everything we said together went in there somewhere, stored forever.

Sometimes she was wound up and would want a bath to relax before bed, but it was an old place and the bathroom was dark and dirty, with grey pipes along the walls that would creak and bang when the water was running, and huge spiders that came in through the window high up on the wall. She was freaked out by the place, so she never wanted to stay in there long unless I went with her. It was my job to go in first, turn on the taps and hunt for any spiders, which I would catch in toilet paper and then flush down the toilet. To be honest I was quite scared of the spiders as well, especially when they were those ones with big fat white bodies, the really strong ones you could feel struggling against your fingers. They made me feel sick.

But I did it anyway, and when the coast was clear I'd call her. I had to stand in the bathroom doorway and shout up the stairs. If I didn't stay in the doorway someone else in the building would come and pinch the bath, because there was a meter you had to put money in to get the water and you know people will do anything to save money. It happened once, and it didn't matter how much I banged on the door the bastard wouldn't come out, I could hear him or her swishing about in the water, ignoring me, so I just gave up in the end.

Alice would stand in our doorway with a towel wrapped round her and another one under her arm and usually a pair of my socks on — she didn't have any slippers and she didn't want to get any of her own socks dirty, because they were white.

So I'd shout up the stairs and she'd come running down and jump into the bathroom. She'd take the socks off and step in the bath and I would sit on the toilet next to it, holding the towels. I liked sitting there, watching her soft white body floating, her nipples poking through the surface, the black triangle of her fanny rippling. She would lie there, her eyes closed so she couldn't see the shadows on the walls, telling me stories — any old thing. Sometimes I had no idea what the stories were about and I'd say: "What are you talking about?" But she'd just carry on as though I hadn't said a thing.

Once she was washed and relaxed, I'd lay one of the towels on the floor and she would step onto it, still with her eyes closed so I had to guide her, and then I'd dry her. She liked that, me drying her, and I liked the feeling of her warm skin through the towel, and sometimes, if it was cold, steam would come off her. When she was dry and wrapped up with the socks on again I had to look out the door and listen to make sure there was no one else around — usually there wasn't, I think only once I met someone on the stairs, a guy not much older than me, but really skinny and with manic eyes, like he was on something; he was more shocked than I was to see someone else on the stairs, and he just ran away without saying anything.

When I'd made sure there was no one about, I would hit the light button and we'd run up the stairs to try and get back to our room before the time ran out. Usually I'd try to grab her arse as we went up and she would laugh — didn't matter how many times I did it, we always had a laugh about it. Nearly every time we got back up the stairs, though, I'd have to go through all my pockets to find the key and then the light would go out and we'd spend ages trying to find the keyhole or I would have to grope down the wall in the dark trying to find the light button again. Neither of us liked that bit much, but it made the sight of the warm room, the multi-coloured walls, the little bed and the telly on the chair, the big, white framed window, sink and mirror, even better to see when we finally got in. Sometimes, when it was late and dark, or raining hard, or she said she was feeling a bit down about something, she would leave the telly on all the time, so when we came in after the bath there were voices, like a family waiting for us round a big table covered with food.

After those bath times we would sometimes crawl straight into bed, especially if it was cold. She would want to kiss then, nothing else.  At first I'd try it on but she'd push my hands away, saying "no, just kiss me." It annoyed me to begin with. I thought, what's the point of kissing if you're not going to get anything else? But soon I was looking forward to bath times as much as she did. We'd just lie there kissing for ages, then fall asleep like that, face to face. Sounds soft, I know.

On Saturdays we would go to the launderette to wash our stuff. She had more clothes than me, but still not much, so she took care of everything, and she started looking after my clothes too. We'd sit in the launderette and she would be sewing on buttons or whatever using her tiny sewing kit, while I would stare out of the window watching people and cars going by in the rain. It might have been boring if we were alone, but it was nice sitting there in the warm, just feeling her next to me. Then on Sundays we would go for a walk if the weather was good, or meet some of my friends in the pub if anyone was around. I think my friends liked her. To be honest, I didn't even think about it at the time, but I can't think of any reason why anyone wouldn't like her.

So it was all good, really, though after a while she got a bit bitchy, just a bit. When she was paid she bought me some shoes and bought herself a new jacket and we had something nice for dinner — I can't remember what. But then she started at me after dinner: "Why don't you get a job? It can't be healthy just lying here all the time smoking, you should at least go out and do something."

I told her it was raining and that I didn't have an umbrella, and she said that it doesn't rain all the time, which is true but that wasn't my point.

She kept at it, though. Not every day, but a lot. Why don't you get a job then you can buy yourself things and we could find a better place to live, things like that. We would argue about it, and sometimes I would throw things about and she would storm out and not come back for an hour or so, but it was getting towards winter and it was too cold to stay out long. Still, I didn't listen to her about the job.

But then one night we were lying on the bed together, watching telly. It was raining like a bastard but we were inside and warm. Then she says to me: "What do you want for Christmas?"

"Dunno," I said.

"A jumper?"

"Why would I want a fucking jumper?" I said. "My mum gets me jumpers."

"There's no need to swear at me," she said. "If you don't tell me what you want you'll get a fucking jumper."

"What do you want then?" I said, sort of to change the subject. And she jumps up, on her hands and knees on the bed, and she's grinning at me and her eyes are shiny.

"I saw this lovely necklace," she says.

"A necklace?" I said. "Sounds expensive."

Her face fell a bit, and she said: "I'll buy it, and you can wrap it for me. I want something from you to open on Christmas morning."

This was a touchy subject already: she'd nagged at me to go with her to meet her folks at Christmas, but I'd point blank refused. That caused quite a row too.

"If I don't have anything to open from you," she said. "My parents will think you don't love me."

I'd never used the word, but I never denied it. Even when she said in this girly voice: "Do you love me babe?" I'd say yes.

Anyway, this did my head in. So I said no, I will buy you the fucking necklace, and she asked me how, but I didn't tell her because I didn't know yet.

The next day, though, I put on my best clothes and walked down to the local and the landlord, who knew me pretty well, gave me a job collecting and washing the glasses and stuff and said that when there was a vacancy I could go behind the bar. That fucking easy. I felt like a right twat having laid about doing nothing except smoking and jerking myself off when I could have been earning a few quid.

So I went back to the bedsit and paced up and down, waiting for her to come back from work, and as soon as she walked in I said: "I got to go out babe, I got a job."

Her face was a picture to start with, but then she said: "What kind of job?" Frowning like.

"Washing bottles and stuff at the local to start with," I said. "But then I'll be behind the bar."

And she says: "But I'll never see you! You'll be out all night."

I couldn't fucking believe it. "You're the one who wanted me to get a job!"

"But we'll never see each other," she said again.

"I won't be working every day," I said, though I actually had no idea about that, it hadn't come up.

"What days are you off?" she said.

Like I said, I didn't know. So I told her, I don't know. Anyway, you get the picture.

As it turned out I worked five days, cash in hand, so I had a bit of extra cash and I bought the necklace she wanted and wrapped it up really carefully and she put it in her bag and went off for Christmas with her folks. I stayed at the bedsit. John, the landlord at the local, had asked me to do extra shifts at the pub because lots of his staff were heading off to be with their own families. It didn't seem to occur to him that I might be doing the same. He'd have been right, anyway, I hadn't spoken to my folks in months — they were abroad and weren't coming back for a long time. So I stayed working at the pub and when I wasn't working I hung out there, chatting with the punters and drinking. It was better than sitting in the bedsit — except Christmas day, when I just got pissed and watched the telly.

So things were looking pretty good for me, really. I had a bit of money and a girlfriend, and we were even talking about finding a new place to live. I'd already brought most of my stuff to her place so there wasn't much room any more. When she was away I started missing her. At first I thought it would be good to have the place to myself, but after a couple of days I started feeling a bit lost. When I came home at night it was quiet and dark, so I'd switch the telly on just to have a voice in the room, but it didn't really work, because you can't talk to a telly. Well, you can, you can talk to anything, but not everything would answer back, and even if things did answer back, people for example, or parrots, they didn't make much sense. I mean they made sense, people did, at least the sober ones, but what they said didn't really do anything for me. I started daydreaming about her lying in the bath and telling me her stories, but I couldn't remember any of them, because I hadn't been listening. I regretted that, and I told myself that I would always listen in future because I didn't want to miss anything.

Then it occurred to me that we hadn't had a bath night for a while because I was working in the evenings, especially in the run up to Christmas I'd been on nearly every night covering for people, so there'd been no time for bath nights and when I came home she'd be damp and there'd be water splashed all around the sink in the corner.

So I went to the phone box. It must have been kind of late, and I must have been kind of drunk because I didn't think about what time it was. She'd given me this little scrap of paper with her parents' number on it 'for emergencies'. She answered.

"I thought it would be you," she said.

"Why?" I said. "Why did you think it would be me?"

"Calling this time of night," she said. "I thought it would be you so I ran downstairs to get the phone. My dad came out in his 'jamas, but I just told him it would be you, some kind of emergency. Is it an emergency?"

"No," I said. "I was just thinking. We haven't had a bath together in a while."

"I suppose not," she said.

"Do you want to?" I said. "When you get back?"

"That would be lovely," she said.

"Alright then," I said. I was quiet for a bit, then I said. "'Night then."

"I'll be home in a few days," she said.

"Right," I said. "How long have you been gone, anyway?"

"Three days," she said.

"Three days?" I said. "Is that all?"

"Yes," she said, and I could kind of hear her smile, if that makes sense. Then she said: "Do you miss me?"

I stubbed my cigarette out on the metal shelf where you're supposed to write notes or whatever.

"Yes ," I said.

Then I hung up. I stood in the phone box a while staring at the emergency numbers and feeling a bit stupid, but I was glad, too.

When she came back from her folks' we were both happy and she immediately jumped on me and shagged me. Then we lay back on the bed and she blabbered on about her Christmas, and all the fantastic food she'd had, which pissed me off a bit because all I'd had was some cold chips and peanuts because I'd forgotten to buy food and everything was closed. But she was full of it, and she said that she'd told them all about me and they were really happy about it and loved the necklace I'd given her, and were dying to meet me, which made me think she must have stretched the truth a bit. But then she says: "The only thing is, I'm late."

"What?" I said. "What do you mean you're late?"

"My period," she said. "It's late."

"Why?" I said.

"It might be nothing," she said.

"But it might be."

"Yes it might."

"Fucking hell," I said. "What are you going to do?"

"I thought we'd talk about that," she said.

"Talk about it? What do you mean talk about it? I'm not going to talk about it."

"It's yours too."

I was going to say no it fucking isn't, but then I thought, shit, she's right.

"Shit," I said.

She was quiet a while, then she said: "It might be alright. It's only been a couple of weeks."

"Have you been late before?" I said. And she said that no, not really.

I went and cracked open the window to have a smoke. "We'll just wait then," I said.

So we waited, and another week went by and she went to the doctor to get a test. She wanted me to go with her but I got away with it because I was working. When she came back she was really pale, so I knew what the news was, but I asked her anyway.

"So?"

"I'm pregnant."

There was this ringing in my ears, like she'd just twatted me across the head. I sat down and she sat next to me and held my hand.

"It'll be alright," she said. "We'll manage."

"What do you mean we'll manage?" I said. "You're not going to have it are you?"

"What do you expect me to do?" she said.

"Well," I said. "You know."

"I'm not getting rid of it," she said. "I can't do that."

I thought about this for a while, and I wondered if you're supposed to say you'll get married and all that, but then I thought that if I mentioned it she'd want to, and the next thing you know I've got a wife and a baby and she'll want another one, and she'll probably get fat. So I said nothing about that. Maybe I'd ask her later.

You know how it is — you make the best of things, and after a few days wandering about shell-shocked I started to get used to the idea of having a baby, though I had no idea what being a dad would be like. When we had time off she wanted to go down the shops and look at baby stuff. It embarrassed me, especially the way some of the women looked at us, like we were scum. But Alice didn't seem to notice and she got excited at the prams and weepy at the baby clothes. I thought they were cute, like something for a doll, but I didn't think you would be able to get a real live baby in there — someone had got the measurements wrong, used centimetres instead of inches or something.

We would lie on the bed at night and she'd make me put my hand on her belly, and sometimes I'd be drifting off and she'd shout "There! Did you feel that?" It would scare the shit out of me, but it made me laugh at the same time. I didn't feel anything of course, but I'd just kiss her on the cheek and say "yes babe".

 When we had sex I had to be gentle, but she still wanted it, quite a lot actually.

She got near to three months and we went to see her parents. I was shitting myself, and a bit shaky, but that was maybe because I'd given up the fags. But her folks were OK really, and her mum made some great food, so it was all going well until after dinner, when Alice said: "Mum, dad, I'm pregnant."

Another twatting round the head. Her folks said nothing, just sat there looking like someone had shot their dog, though if someone shot their dog they'd probably have something to say about it. They didn't say anything, like I said, didn't even look at each other, just stared at their plates.

"Peter asked me to marry him," she said then. "But I don't think it's the right time. We need to move into the house first, get it set up right and all that. We're going to need a nursery, now, aren't we darling? So it's just as well we have three bedrooms in the new place. And we'll have to make the garden safe; there's a pond that Peter's going to fill in, maybe turn into a sandpit."

Obviously I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about, but she seemed to be saying the right things for the folks, so I kept my mouth shut.

I asked her about it later, though, when we were going to bed.

"What the fuck was all that about?" I said.

She sighed. "Darling [this darling thing was new too]… darling, I know my parents; I'm just trying to keep them happy, paint a rosier picture. I mean, we will have these things, won't we? You're going to study so you can get a better job, and we'll save and buy a little place. So it will happen; it's just not happening right now. I'm just making it look better for them."

"Right," I said. And to be honest, it did sound like a nice setup, and it's true I planned to study because I'd got a bee in my bonnet about being able to look after her and the baby properly. We couldn't be living in a bedsit. This image popped into my head of me and Alice sitting on the grass in a garden; there was an open door at the back of a house, and a baby on the grass between us. It felt good.

So it was all pretty cheerful the next morning, and her mum made us a huge breakfast and her dad took us to the station to catch the bus — he even shook my hand and patted me on the back, like I'd won something. But on the bus ride home, Alice wasn't well. She threw up and then just fell asleep and I couldn't wake her up for ages. When we finally got home she went straight to bed, but I had to go to work. I was worried, though, and I broke three glasses that night. John wasn't too pleased. He was even less pleased when the phone rang and it was Alice.

"What's the matter?" I said.

"Come and get me," she said. "I have to go to the hospital. I'm in the phone box."

John took us, actually. He was really good about it once he knew what was going on. Long story short, she lost the baby. I sat in a waiting room all night, though they told me I wouldn't be able to see her until the morning, because she was sleeping. But I didn't want to go back to the bedsit without her.

That was the first thing she asked me when she saw me in the morning. It wasn't visiting time but the nurses took pity on me because I'd been up all night and was in a bit of a state, so they put a screen round her bed and smuggled me in. Alice was propped up in bed, almost as white as the pillows, except with black bags under her eyes, a bit like a panda. A very small part of me thought about saying that — "you look like a fucking panda" — but I didn't say it, I said: "How are you babe?"

"Have you been home?" she said.

"No."

"You stayed all night?"

"Yes." She didn't say anything then, and was just staring into space, so I said: "You lost the baby."

"Yes, I'm sorry," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Of course I am babe."

"It's better for you," she said. "You won't have to look after us now."

I honestly hadn't thought about that. I'd just been thinking about her, but I didn't say anything. I suppose I was hurt.

"You have to go back home and throw out the sheets," she said.

She told me not to look at them, that they were scrunched on the floor and I should just put them in a bag and throw the bag in the bin. So I did. But there was a big black patch on the mattress. I couldn't throw the mattress out, so I flipped it over. Then I went back to the hospital to pick her up, and on the bus home I held her hand, but we didn't say a word.

The days that followed, she didn't go to work; she just lay in bed, sleeping mostly. I tried to get her to eat. I made soup and cheese sandwiches and stuff, all her favourites, but she wasn't having any of it. When I went to work I left the telly on for her, and it was always still on when I got back, but she would be lying on her side, facing the wall, and she didn't even say anything when I came in, so I would just undress and get in beside her, and lie there, staring at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

One night, though, it was maybe a week after she lost it, when I was getting into bed, I put my arm around her, and I said "I love you, Alice."

She didn't say anything for a while, and I felt an ache in my chest, because I wanted her to say it to me. I didn't really think about it, but it felt like if she said it back to me, just this once, though she'd said it lots before, everything would be alright and she'd turn over and we'd kiss like on bath nights. But she didn't say anything for ages, until at last she said:

"Too late, you should have told me before; you should have asked me to marry you before."

I didn't say anything back.

The following afternoon, after my early shift, I nipped back home to check on her, and she was gone. I thought great, she's finally got up and gone out to get some air. Her purse was gone too so maybe she went to the shop. So I went down to the corner shop but they hadn't seen her in there, then to the supermarket, but there was no sign of her. I thought then that maybe I just missed her and she was back at the bedsit. So I ran back there and up the stairs. I was looking forward to seeing her again — it felt like I hadn't seen her since she lost the baby. But she still wasn't there either, so I ran back to the pub because it was getting on towards my late shift, and maybe she had gone there to see me. But she hadn't.

She didn't turn up that night, so I called the hospital to see if she'd gone back, but there was no record of her, and I spent the night pacing again, and feeling sick, wondering where she might be. She didn't have any friends nearby that she might have gone to see or anything. The next day there was no sign either. I called in to swap shifts and stayed in the bedsit all day, leaning out of the window to look down on the street, up this way, down that, and it must have been a hundred times I thought I saw her, and I was relieved and excited, but then I saw it wasn't her and I felt sick again.

Finally I thought there was nothing else for it, I would phone her parents, and if they didn't know anything, I would phone the police.

Her dad answered, and his voice was flat. I told him my name, but I had to remind him I was Alice's boyfriend, and I told him that I was a bit worried because she hadn't been well, she lost the baby, and now she'd gone off and hadn't come back.

"Oh," he said, and I thought it was a bit of an under-reaction.

"Have you heard from her?" I said, a bit loudly because I was getting annoyed with him and I hadn't eaten.

"Alice is dead, Peter," he said. "I'm sorry."

I don't remember much else. The details pieced themselves together over the next few days. From what I understood she'd gone to the phone box, called her folks and said she was going to visit. But she never made it. She got off the bus early, walked to a nearby railway bridge, and threw herself off. She was 19. I knew this because it had been her birthday just a few weeks before. I'd borrowed this fold up table and chairs from the pub and lugged them back to the bedsit. I used a white cloth from the wall and set the table up with some flowers in a pint glass because I didn't have a vase. I couldn't really cook but I had a go at making spaghetti. Her face was a picture when she walked in and saw me standing there looking like a plonker wearing a tie I'd borrowed from John. She laughed like a drain. I gave her a bracelet that matched her necklace.

Nobody spoke to me at the funeral, though I suppose I didn't speak to anyone either. I listened to them talking, though, especially one woman who had this theory that there was an old boyfriend Alice used to meet on that bridge, and that she never got over losing him, and so she topped herself. I knew that was bollocks of course, but her parents didn't seem to want to tell anyone about her losing the baby, so I wasn't going to either.

I went back to the bedsit with the technicolour walls. I put the photograph of her and Buster in a frame and put it in her jewellery box with the sewing kit and her necklace and bracelet and her pink knickers, the ones she said were her favourites because she was wearing them the night we met, and I put the lot back under the bed. Sometimes when I was drunk I would take them out and have a look through them, but I tried not to. I took up smoking again - well, you would, wouldn't you - and I would sit by the window watching the street, chaining it, and thinking about Alice.

After about six months it was getting toward winter again and I thought I was getting better. I thought: it's not good for me to live here, like this, surrounded by her stuff. So I took down all the pieces of material and folded them in a neat pile then stuffed them in her suitcase with her clothes and I lumped the suitcase down to the charity shop.

Thinking about it later, I should have dumped the suitcase outside the shop at night, the way people do, but like an idiot I pushed the door open, making the bell ring, and heaved the suitcase onto the counter.

"There's some stuff for you," I said to the biddy behind the counter, then I turned to go.

But she said: "Just a moment, sir. We need to check through this… case."

So I turned back and said go ahead, and she said I had to wait while she did it because I might have to take some stuff back because it was company policy or whatever, so I said fine, I'm in no hurry.

It was OK to start with. She was a bit puzzled by the material but said that they should be able to find a home for it, but then she came to Alice's clothes, laid out neatly at the bottom of the case, two of her three pairs of shoes wrapped up in tissue. The biddy put her glasses on to examine the shoes, turned her nose up a bit but then put them to one side, then she started lifting up Alice's blouses, Alice's skirts and the jacket she was so proud of, and with each thing she held up to the light she smiled a small, patronising smile at me, or shook her head, and she held out one of the skirts, a short black number, and she pointed at a seam and said: "Look at this repair, we can't have that!", and I looked, and even I could see that the stitching was crooked, and the cotton was the wrong shade, and it was the saddest thing I ever saw, and it wasn't until then that I knew how much I'd loved her, and how much I'd lost.