I know that number.

The wonders of science. Or technology. Or BT.

I know that number. It’s your number. Someone – perhaps even you – is trying to ring me. From you flat. Your flat where I am no longer welcome. You flat where we used to meet. To talk. To eat. To laugh. To love. To fuck.

The ringing stops. The LCD on the phone goes dead. Lifeless. Empty.

Why have you left me? Have you given up?

Yet I didn’t try to answer.

He sat in the lounge, in a state of charged emotion, looking around. Too fraught to cry. And scared at the lack of inhibition that this would bring.

Next to the door. It was the yellow paint that caught his eye, just inside the carrier back waiting for the next donation to the charity shop. An old car security lock, working, but too small to fit the new car. He moved.

Back in the seat, crooklock in hand. Some noise on the radio, but that only came though from another room, another world even, the world where things were different. There was no-one else in his world, not at this moment, the room was empty but for him, reflecting too much, and holding a yellow piece of steel.

And he swung.

At the exact moment that the bar came down on the top of his theigh, he was able to let out properly a cry of how he felt. This was what released the emotion. This was how he could get rid of the pain and frustration of the day, the week, the year.

And again.

And again.

And…

And when the tears were properly flowing, then, only then, was he able to stop. It was better than the old way. There were no scars. The bruises would heal, eventually but slowly, and that was what he needed.To see the effect, to bring emotion to the surface. He stood to get a drink, and the pain embraced his damaged legs.

“What can I do for you?” Ever the submissive. She hated herself for it, and yet it was who she was. Even worse: “is there a problem?”

Bob leant across to her. His brow was red. She tried to turn her mind away from his unwashed odor and avoided looking at the sweat stained underarms of his crumpled shirt. Only then did she notice that his breath wore the unmistakable air of a lunchtime session at the pub. His faced glowed from the warming aftermath of his beer.

“I’m sorry to have kept you.” He leered at a secretary through a crack in the door. “How’s Ian?”

She let out a gulp but was determined not to get upset over that bastard, and instead stared forwards.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I forgot. Whatabout.. Whatabout the children?”

“I don’t have any children, Mr Charleston.” Every time it was the same. Did the man turn off his brain before he spoke to her?

“Really? But I thought.. No matter. That wasn’t why I asked you in.”

It was only at the the third cry that he raised his eyes to look at the man. Dressed in what would once have been a resplendent evening suit, it would still take more than the current dirt and tears to hide the once proud elegance. And it showed. Even so, this wasn’t the reason for Jonte’s surprise, or why his feet felt nailed to the station concourse.

He was looking at himself.

From three years ago. And that night, the night that he had first met Em, and the night…

“Some tea, sir. I just want to get a cup of tea.”

Jonte put his hand into his pocket and pulled out two pound coins.

“Here.” He tried no drop the coins, to avoid touching the other man’s hand.

“Thank you sir. Bless you.” He started to walk away. “I’ll see you.”

Jonte felt a shiver run down his spine as he opened the door to the station and walked out into the car park.

Some coincidence, surely. But how many people would have had a suit like that one? It was the jacket that stood out: Jonte had been insistent, despite the expense, on the purchase of a vintage garment, adjusted to fit at additional expense, and decorated with a thin silver thread. Marion had always hated the idea of the decoration, but once it was finished even she admitted a liking to the suit. It was far more subtle than she’s anticipated, and she laughed, it gave Jonte a distinctive edge over the other penguins at the ball. Em had agreed.

And he was convinced, on seeing her leave her seat and signal to him to meet at the entrance to the train, that it was for one final “I love you” before the weekly departure.

No dice.

A comment on the state of the trains, wrapped in a vehermence bordering on the obsessive, after which the door shut leaving him alone on the platform. Picking up the bag containing their stash from the day, he walked the length of the platform to the station exit.

“Spare some change?”

Why not. Have it all. Have the fucking lot. Its only money, you probably need it more than I do, even if it is only to shoot up. Save you breaking into another house. But instead, like normal, he mumbled an apology about having no cash and kept his head focussed down as he tried to project the stress of the weekend onto the homeless.

“Please. Anything.”

This didn’t normally happen. The man was standing in front of him, blocking the exit. The station doors were open beneath the clock. 10.00 pm. It was still light. It was only this year that he had realised the extent to which he loved the summer. He shook his head, and tried to make his way out, and up to the nearest pub.

“For some tea.”

Right. Tea. Like he’d ever seen a tramp drinking tea. But the guy wasn’t going to move. Stood there like the living dead, it seemed as though the only way to get out of the station would be to offer some money. Something small. He fumbled in his pocket, trying to find twenty pence amongst the pound coins. Where were the staff when you needed them?

“I did, yes.”

It was the culmination of another painful week for Marie, who was forced to marked the anniversary of her husband of ten years leaving her for another man.

“No, thank you. I’ve just had a cup.”

Not the right move, she thought again, her physical discomfort now mirrored by a frown on her section head. No matter. She wanted to know why she was here.

He sat down opposite her, forcing his trousers to ride up his legs. The brown argyle socks failed miserably to protect Marie from the vision of his pale skin, exposed and decorated by dark, wiry hairs.

“I shall have one anyway. If you’ll excuse me.”

Not bothering to move, he pulled the door open slightly and lent his head around into the open office, asking his PA to bring him in a cup. With a brief smile as he looked forward to his liquid refreshment, Bob pushed the door closed and turned once more to face the anxious Marie.

“Well, thank you for coming.

“I expect you’re wondering why I asked you in to see me?”

There was not one glimmer of hope all afternoon, not one redeeming feature as she sat at her desk waiting for Bob to call her into his office. The repeated cups of tea failed to calm Marie’s already frazzled nerves, and by the time Bob sent a call asking for Marie’s immediate attention the only effect of the drinks was to send her bladder into a spasm, so much so that as she stood up she had to shuffle to the adjacent office and prayed that the meeting wouldn’t last so that she could get off to the loo. She knew that she should have gone earlier, but Bob was notorious for keeping waiting the staff he had asked to report to him, and then going ballistic if they should get sidelined into another task. Or head off for the loo. So Marie had waited, thinking that she’d have been in and out of the office by early afternoon, and in the meantime filling herself with tea as she got more and more worked up over why he wanted to see her.

“Ahh, Marie, good of you to come in. Are you well? You seem slightly flushed.”

If only, she thought.

“Do take a seat”. He pointed to one of the two white leather chairs, immaculate in their presentation of a leader.

“Thank you, Mr Charleston” Marie managed, sitting down with her legs crossed so tight that her circulation would probably stop.

“Tea?”

He looked at her but she ignored his adoration.

“Darling?”

“I’m not interested” she muttered, barely audible but to the cushion that she held in a tight grip as she sat, knees up in front of her, feet marking the white cloth of the sofa.

“Please. We need to talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to say. I can’t believe what you wrote. And after you’d told me..”

“What do you mean, what I wrote? I haven’t written anything.”

She said nothing, to start with, but then pulled the journal out from under the cushion and handed it to him.

“This.”

He took the book and looked at its battered cover. Certainly, it looked like it was his writing. Opening the pages – well, as far as he knew it was his. A record of a mundane life. Hardly anything to get worked up about.

“Look at your last entries”

He flicked the pages towards the middle of the book. He hadn’t bothered to keep the journal for a couple of years. Nothing to write about, at least nothing that he wanted to remind himself about. As he turned over the last couple of pages – this couldn’t be right – the dates were last week. It looked as though it was his writing but he’d not even seen the book since they’d moved into the flat together, and that was a year ago. But yet it seemed as though he’d written..

“Go on. Read it. Bastard.”

The final entry was written exactly one week earlier. As his eyes scanned the hastily written text, a sickness filled his stomach and his vision blurred.

“I.. I didn’t write this.

“Honestly.”

She tore the book from his hands and threw it to the floor. “Of course you didn’t. Someone broke and forged it for you. What the hell did you mean by that. Tell me.”

“I can’t”

“Try”

“But I didn’t write it”

“You make me sick”.

The journal had falled open on the final pages, and his eyes scanned once again the impossible words that were in front of him.

I remember getting up in the morning and staring at the cracks in the ceiling, putting on trousers, a shirt, not too bad, off to work, hit by a car by the park but I’m here, car came off worse, three broken ribs and a lost tooth, makes the car sound altogether too human, still, musn’t grumble, in the office, sat at the desk, the screen was an opening into the soul of the work, computer crashed, work is soulless, had coffee, woman screamed, blood dripping from my chest, pulled out a bit of the radiator, hadn’t seen that there but I might get a few quid for it at the scrap merchant, she’s still staring, I go away, feel cold, she’s all cammo for snow, her mate comes up and says she looks like she’s seen a ghost.