Picking up from “Phoenix at the Gateway to the Lakes” – an extract from the novel “Here Am I Sitting in my Tin Can.”
Dear Mark
Oh why did you come back into my life at this time? It was so lovely seeing you again and I mean it when I said that you are still a beautiful man. You said it was not just because of what you saw on the news about the fires in Greece, that you thought about me a lot… I too thought about you a lot through the years. You know I loved you once with all my heart and I sensed in the unspoken moments you wanted me to be that woman again, but sadly I can’t. You see it would not be fair to fall in love again, on us both. I have sold my business and am going to live in London with my mum until I die. The Doctors said it won’t be long, months or even weeks. So that is the choice I have made. I will visit daddy tonight and say goodbye. I remember you once asked why men do not receive flowers, so I send these and hope you like them and they don’t die too soon! I truly hope you finish your book and you stay safe and warm on your “tin can”, and get your life back together again soon. Love always and goodbye, D x
I’m reading this for the umpteenth time, and each time the words feel like knives driven deeper. The moment I found the flowers last night, I raced to Diantha’s father’s restaurant in the high street, where I was told she’d already been and gone.
“Gone where?” I said, “May I have an address?”
“I don’t think she wants you to know,” he said, and added that she told him we’d met up again and she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to unearth distant memory, not now.
“Is that she? Or you?” I said. He didn’t answer. He just told me he was busy, and I should get back on my van and drive, because there is nothing here for me. Not now.
I know the flowers won’t last long on my tin can, so I clip them with my army knife and press them like Diantha said, in the pages of my atlas. I see they are primroses and wonder what they mean, and where I will go next.
To be continued…
Mark Bickerton 