We meet up after he finishes work and sit there in that over hot neutral space, later it thunders, and he looks over at me, the him that used to be mine, with that quizzical look I came to know so well. He opens his mouth to speak, and out it comes, like the rain after it’s been dry for too long, it pours on and on and all I can pick up from it is the bit where he says; ‘you know you were always such a problem, I tried for years to work out how to fix you and to make you better.’ And then there it is, out in the open, the reason for us, because I perplexed him, as if there was something wrong with me, something that needed to be changed, and of course I’d felt it, picked up on it and ran with it, I became the person he wanted me to be, riddled with holes and quirks, because it was easier to play out the part and assume to position instead of looking to see what the hell we were actually doing with each other. In some strange way all the foibles he created for me were the glue that held us together for a little while.

I know that I should be angry, that I should storm and shout and respond in one of the ways I used to, but instead I sit still and silent, this scares him more for the way it’s new and unexpected. We leave carrying ice-creams in their wafer cones and I walk him back to his car. The cone makes my mouth all dry, I crack bits off and throw them to the waiting gulls with their pink rimmed eyes. He looks over, ‘still not eating then,’ he says more than asks. I just shrug, too tired of the skipping record to reply. Nothing I say will affect what he believes.

I walk home through the park, students let out after their finals, walking barefoot with half empty too warm bottles of wine, smoke from fires rises and mixes with the lowering sun. I feel sort of lucky to be walking past them all, alone, but with all the possibilities of life opening up again.