MIKE
She was my first serious girlfriend. She was ... the love of my life. You remind me of her. A lot of girls remind me of her. You always see the dead in the living.
That’s how I lost my job as a teaboy. See, I was in my room one day, in my room upstairs, and her mum phoned and she said she’d ... she was coming back from the seaside and on the way there’d been some kind of accident. Yes ... a Dover-bound juggernaut. She was with this boy, this old boyfriend, the one she had before me and they’d been drinking. Apparently. They’d been ... they’d been seeing each other again. I ... went to the hospital and I sat by her bedside in the hospital, watching as a ... a large, dark blotch over one eye spread to the other and the lights went out. I watched as the ... the lights went out ... and I’d ... I was holding her hand and saying to her to ... you know ... live. Because I couldn’t believe this was happening. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t hang on ... not even for me.
After that I wasn’t very good at ... I wasn’t much good at anything. I tried to talk to people about it. I talked to all sorts of people. Strangers. In pubs. I tried to talk to mum. I tried to talk to dad but ... you know I think he thought it was my fault. I think he thought I was just being a troublemaker. Robbie was busy with his university friends and ... I don’t resent them. I just get a bit angry sometimes. To think she could go like that and nobody ... even seemed to notice. And I just thought ... and I still think ... it’s fucking nonsense – life’s too short.
Sometimes ... some days ... I see her ... everywhere I look.