Two hours later, once I’ve stopped crying, and sobered up, I peek through the kitchen window with the lights off. The garden looks as it always does, coloured yellow by the street light, empty and useless. No Sandy, no you, and no me. The mattress sits there, pale against the ground, a lot more trouble that I ever thought it would be. 

Maybe I should phone for a doctor.

For a moment I experience that foolish blush, having laughed at all those stupid conspiracies, full of crack-pots and schizoids. This time I’m on on the other side of the asylum glass, believing in ghosts, or alien abduction or something equally unlikely. Strange that one little event can put you outside the norm forever. The harder I’d bang on the glass, insisting that what I saw was real, the more people would laugh at me, disbelieve me, question my sanity.

Though I’m doing enough of that already. The last of the wine is a stain around the kitchen plughole, since the wine’s scent tripped a reflux action. I can’t tell anyone about this, they would lock me up, get me sedated, section me. The thoughts make my head swim, my stomach flutters and throbs like a butterfly carrying a bowling ball. I should sleep, but I’m too wired.

So I keep the light off, and stare out of the kitchen window. Looking for you.

While I stand there, I try reason instead. I raid my memory of everything I saw. It can’t be you I saw, you are dead. So a different Derek - arguing with a different me - in my garden. With Sandy. I took Sandy to the R.S.P.C.A during yours trial, when it was clear you were going away for a long time. You - or him - looked in a mess, while I - the other me - looked furious. I’ve never considered my own face when I’m cross, shooting bile at someone. That anger was a stranger, one I never thought I was capable of.

She certainly wasn’t the grieving widow. Her hair was coloured, covering up some of my grey, her make-up was minimal, controlled. As she left, the anger faded, showing a face far more at ease than I ever see in the mirror. She looked more like my mother.

Is this what my grief has done to me? I’d never thought. Am I a timid, mopping mouse now, spending all the time thinking of you, and what you did, and all that happened? Yet there she stood, hating you, sick of you, turning her back on you.

What the hell did you do to her?

And why are you still alive for her? Ignored, suffered, despised, when all I want is your warmth next to me, your hand on mine.

I peek out the window again, leaning against the washing machine. I hope it doesn’t rain. I need to get the mattress back in. Just in case you come back.

You looked rough, like you’d been drinking again, not looked after yourself. Your devotion to the other-me shone like a weak candle under the mess you were in, a worn-through kind of love, scrubbed so hard that the light shines through it. 

I so wanted to run to you, hold you, make you feel better. My throat is still sore from weeping, my eyes puffy and aching every time I blink. I should sit down, or have a bath, but I don’t.

There’s been nothing for hours. I have feathers on my breath as I tiptoe to the back door. I pull the handle down slowly, jumping as the mechanism cracks. Outside, there’s just the garden, just the wall and the gate. Just a mattress going damp on the grass.

It takes me half an hour to get it back upstairs. Part of the lining has ripped, and it’s scuffed with dirt, and smells of the damp and worms. 

I don’t care. I put a sheet down, fetch my duvet from the spare room, and curl up on it, for the first time in months. I wonder if you’ll come to bed, lie on your side next to me. Remember that all too often, you fell asleep on the sofa, while I wished with all my might that you’ll come to bed.

Please come to bed. I just want to hold you.