 
The Clockwork Man

By Ian Dyer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are all from the authors mind. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Ian Dyer.

All rights reserved.
For Cheryl and Isabella.
Table of Contents

Fragile

Shadow Man

Milk Bottle

Fixer

Jacobs Story

Wanting to Die

Roses

Shelter

Razor Sharp

La Mer

Poppy

Pink Blanket

Time to Heal
Fragile

The warmth is gone on that side of the bed because my wife is dead.

I look over, making sure that she isn't there and that the last twelve months haven't been a nightmare, checking to make sure if I am still married, not a widower at thirty-six like I actually am, and like so often over the last twelve months my chest hurts and my stomach twists itself into fluttering butterflies and I hate myself a little bit more because I see that she isn't there. She isn't looking at me as I look at her and her eyes are those sleepy eyes, all puffy and full of life, and God I was so stupid to think that she would be. Why do I do that to myself?

I wrap the sheets around me, shrinking myself into their comforting warmth and pray for sleep to take me, that sweet release of sleep that takes me away from... from....

......

......

...... But of course sleep doesn't come and I lay here thinking about what woke me:

I was dreaming of her again, and like all the other times that I have dreamt of her I cannot see her face because I can't remember her face but I know it's there under a shimmering mist that moves as she moves. We are on the beach together, before the bump in her belly came along, and we are walking, leaving two sets of footprints in the soft wet sand. It is scorching hot and her black hair flows out behind her as we walk into the breeze that is full of salt and aromas of the sea that remind me of being a child, it's an innocent smell, a real smell. We are on this beach in Cornwall as it's the bank holiday weekend and it is what lovers do. I turn to her and don't say what I feel and she turns to me and smiles and what we feel for each other engulfs us both and lifts us higher than where the seagulls swoop but still the mist covers the face that I really want to see and so I plead to her, Let me see you, and she laughs at me and that was when I woke up.

I don't know why she laughed at me.

My back starts to throb a dull ache. The mattress still needs turning, replacing if the truth be told, but what's the point in doing either? I roll over, far away from the side that is empty and stare blankly at the alarm clock that highlights the time in bright red digital glory. I whisper, Emily, as I try to drift off to sleep but sleep doesn't come to me straight away. I seem to have lost the talent of nothing thoughts because all my thoughts are full of my dead wife, they are thoughts that hurt.

~

The alarm clock doesn't go off because I have a different alarm clock now. She comes running into the bedroom and curls up beside me and the cold side of the bed warms a little now that she is in with me. My eyes are shut tight but the light pouring through the curtains is enough to tell me that its way past the time to get up but still I lay here and wrap my arms around the little bundle and I wish her a good morning and she wishes me one back buts adds a heart-warming, Love you daddy, and then gives me a little kiss on the cheek which reminds me of things I don't want to be reminded of. Before I can return the kiss and open my eyes to see her she is up and rolling over and bumping herself off the bed. She is ready for the day to begin.

The world is too bright this morning and my eyes hurt for just a moment. I rub at them and reach over and put on my glasses. Everything is blurry and then crystalizes into that familiar morning fugue of sleepy nonsense. I ease myself out of bed fearing the ache in my back and am surprised when it isn't there but that doesn't stop me from stretching it out and I think about the monotonous routine of stretching I used to go through before I quit the gym because there was no point in going anymore, who was there to impress? So one Tuesday afternoon I tore up the membership and threw it in the bin. That felt good, but they billed me, as I hadn't quit properly, so who's laughing now?

Poppy is already half way down the stairs as I put on my grey jogging bottoms and t-shirt. After I've performed, the morning duty in the toilet I join her downstairs in the kitchen and make her the breakfast she demanded and we sit together at the breakfast bar Emily always wanted but only ever used a handful of times. I drink my coffee and pick at a bit of toast whilst Poppy devours her Weetabix and slurps her water from the princess pink water bottle I bought her at some point in the last month. That bottle hasn't left her side, I suppose she saw a big girl using one at the zoo I bought it at and she is at the age where what big girls do is what all little girls aspire to do.

I watch her eat. I enjoy watching her eat and then I clear away the bowl and small spoon when she is done. I tell Poppy she only has twenty minutes of playtime before she has to get ready for school and there is a little squeak of joy from the living room and the cartoons go on and she is off to Poppy-World, a world I would like to live in.

I grab her uniform from the recently washed but not yet ironed pile of clothes and then remember that today is the last day before her summer holidays start so it's a non-school uniform day. I go to put the uniform back into the pile but instead hold onto them tight and smell their freshness. They don't need to go back into that pile. She won't need them after the summer holiday and that's not because she is going up a year or growing out of them - which she would most certainly have done if she were going back - Poppy won't need them because she won't be here anymore, and as if on cue my little rock to which I have anchored my life to over the last twelve months comes running into the utility room and grabs hold of my leg and reaches up for a cuddle. I pick her up – a struggle but one I don't care about – and hold her close to me. She wraps her arms around my neck. I can smell her sleepy nightie and then the scent of her curly auburn hair drifts over me and it has the same smell as her mother's hair because Poppy uses the same shampoo as her mummy and I haven't the heart or the guts to tell a six year old whose mother has died that you can't use that shampoo because it rips my guts out whenever I smell it.

When Poppy is done with the hug she asks me politely if she can have an apple and I say, Yeah, of course you can, and I put her down and watch her run off knowing that she will never see her seventh birthday and for the millionth time I start to cry and have to cover my face with her white school shirt which becomes drenched in my tears and I think I have done all I can do and I don't know why I think that but it seems apt. I also think how much I am sick to death of crying, sick to death of feeling sorry for whom? Myself? For her? I have no idea and the tears won't solve anything.

~

It's 8:40 and right on time, like she always is, Carol from number 103 knocks at the door. She has three other kids in tow. Poppy makes up the fourth kid that she takes to school as a favour to me and some of the other families that live local. I am grateful, one day maybe I should tell her that, but right now I pay her each week and that fifteen quid she charges seems to be enough of a thank you.

Poppy leaves the house and I give her a kiss on the lips and tell her to have a good day and that I will see her at three and as she walks over to the other kids of the same age and from the same class Carol looks at me and asks if I'm alright and I answer with the same two words I always do because I know that she isn't asking if I am alright in the normal sense, what she is actually asking is: am I still okay and not going to try and off myself like I did during the winter because I couldn't deal with the loss of my wife and wanted to be an inconvenience to everyone?

"Yep. Fine." Those words drip from my mouth and I grab hold of the front door and push it closed.

I have until three all to myself, much like I have every day, except for the weekends of course, which are filled with Poppy and activities and running around. All things I could accomplish in these hours alone. Probably won't do any of them, I have become lazy and happy with just sitting and looking at the same shit I see every day in my attic space I once called my Den but is now just a room where I am surrounded by the paintings of my thoughts from when times were sweeter and I wasn't so lazy and the world I survived in had a meaning.

~

Folding clothes, looking out of the patio doors into the small thing called a garden. Some Tom Waits is playing in the background and I like it because I know others don't. Old Tom is singing about not wanting to grow up because being a kid is the best and being an adult is shit and I agree with that. I have nothing special to iron and most of Poppy's clothes are too small to need smoothing out so I just keep on folding and looking out of the patio doors into the small square of garden that I could have probably grown vegetables and flowers in but never have and probably never will. We were going to grow vegetables once, myself and Emily, all sorts like my father did and his father did before him but we never got around to it. It's not that we didn't have the time, there were plenty of days we just lounged about before she fell ill, but it always seemed as if the days just drifted by and there was nothing we could do to grab hold of them and stop them and actually do something instead of just letting them go. Letting them dribble down the drain.

I can still picture my father and grandfather, even though they are a long time dead; both of them down the allotment digging and turning and seeding and smoking cigars that I couldn't bear the smell of but at the same time still wanting to smoke one myself. I can see their faces, both similarly hard and rugged, and they are both tall with big hands and strong arms and strong powerful legs and big chests that heave in great gulps of air and they both worked in the same way; more like twins than father and son. And seeing them so clearly in my mind's eye is annoying because Emily has only been dead for just over a year and I can't picture her face or her hands or her legs or her feet – which I know were small because I have kept her shoes - anymore and have to rely on the pictures I took when she didn't want me to and the secret paintings I have of her up in my attic which remind me of what she looks like. Looked like.

Looked like.

I have reminders of Emily all around me. Sometimes I see Emily in Poppy, but not as I often as I'd like and when I do I look away because I can't face the truth. I'd rather slunk away from the truth and live in a fantasy world where she is still alive and will come home from work at half four like she always used to. It's easy to do, easier than facing up to the fact that she is gone, no, gone is the wrong word. She isn't gone because gone can imply that whatever is gone can come back. No, she is dead. Thinking that I chuck a pair of socks into a teetering pile of grouped together socks and they all fall to the carpet like heavy marshmallows and in anger I pick up a navy blue jumper and hurl it at the patio door.

"Fuck it." The jumper flaps and curls itself around the patio door handles and the little zip on the pocket clinks against the window and I sob like it was Emily I threw against the door and then see that that jumper was the last gift she bought for me and so I reach under the ironing board that hasn't had a hot iron on it for months and pick up the jumper and put it on even though it's going to be a hot day. I feel comfortable in that jumper, protected by it as if she is there with me and fuck me that sounds absolutely ridiculous and I would shout at someone and call them a spiritualistic fool for thinking such things.

~

Just before lunch I hang the clothes in Poppy's wardrobe and then in mine and sit on the edge of my bed built for two but which now sleeps just one. I look into the half-filled wardrobe and can see the flowery dress hanging there that will never be worn again. Emily had worn that dress many times, it's one of her favourites, an all-rounder she called it and I know she looked good in it because there is a picture on the nightstand of her wearing it. I kept that dress, among a few others, because she wore it on the days that changed everything: the day I proposed to her and she said yes, the day after we married, the day we moved into this house, the day she fell pregnant with Poppy, the day Poppy came into the world, and the day we found out Emily was going to die.

The day when we found out she was going to die.

We all die, but to find out you are going to before you expect it is almost indescribable. It had been a routine follow up after Emily's yearly check-up. I had gone with her because Emily suspected something was wrong in the way the admin lady from the doctor's office had spoken to her. She had never been ill, prided herself on that and put it down to her diet, her fitness regime, and the yearly check-ups with Dr Knowles. Or Ruth-Dr-Knowles as I and nobody else called her because one day when I had gone to see her about a lump on my foot she had requested I call her Ruth and it kind of slipped out to awkward laughs but the name stuck. Now I can't stop myself saying it so it has become a tradition. We are sat there and Ruth-Dr-Knowles looks glum, concerned, and her usual tanned skin is pale and grey like the weather was outside.

She starts off by saying that she had gotten the blood works back and that levels were fine and went on to say some more medical stuff which bored the crap out of me and so I stared blankly at the large wooden table and noticed that one of its legs was different to the other three. And then Emily asks the question that seemed to me to be pretty obvious considering that Ruth-Dr-Knowles had given her a clean bill of health:

"So everything is okay? I'm good?"

But the doctor replies with the words I will remember for the rest of my days because those words destroyed the rest of my life: "Well...err...There is one more thing."

At first I thought it was going to be about having another child. After all; we were going to start trying again, which was another reason for me being there I think. But it wasn't that. The one more thing was that Emily had a disease. A rare disease – isn't she lucky – one that attacks the muscles. But not all muscles, oh no, for this disease is a cunning little bastard and only attacks one in particular. An important one; the heart, her heart to be precise, a one in a million heart which was diseased with a one in a million illness.

Goose bumps ran down my flesh then as they do now and my throat dried up then as it does now and I really want some water which is how I felt then but I didn't want to ask because I thought the sick I was swallowing down would spurt out instead of words and I would keep on being sick until there was nothing left of me. Ruth-Dr-Knowles gave her apologies, her support and said some other stuff which I wasn't listening too and some leaflets and some phone numbers and a specialist's name that eludes me now because it was foreign and very long and so we always referred to him as the Specialist.

I asked if anything could be done to cure this. Emily asked how long she had left because it was clear that Emily would not win this fight. But there was nothing that could be done and the disease had taken hold and she had less than a year, maybe six months. That's when I lost the battle and was sick in the bin that was next to the wonky table leg which I held onto and hoped didn't break as I heaved and heaved.

The rest of that day is grey. Emily looked after me when I should have been looking after her. We drove home in silence and outside the house she said the name of our daughter and we hugged and sobbed into each other's shoulders until old Spinster Francis knocked on the driver's window to see if everything was okay and we both ignored her and I watched her walk away shaking her head and I thought, fuck you, Spinster Francis, living with your two sisters for all eternity, and I wished that what was inside Emily be passed onto that nosey old cunt.

Spinster Francis is still alive. Knitted a cardigan for Poppy and it's all pink and fluffy with big brass buttons, but it stinks of Parma Violets and no matter what I do I can't get rid of the stink.

Well, that was the last day Emily wore that flowery dress.

Downstairs I hear Tom Waits groaning about miseries of the world and wonder what miseries he has been through and if they compare to mine. I bet they don't. There is a rumour he has six fingers on each hand but that isn't the same as losing your wife.

Since that day back in May it has all been downhill. We told Poppy and she was sad for a bit but a child's mind is easily distracted so she carried on as if nothing was wrong. We pulled her from school and they moaned about that. We had a meeting with the head teacher and the council and Emily told them flatly that we don't give a fuck what you think and that if you think you are going to stop us you have another thing coming. I had never seen her act like that and it must have worked because we didn't hear from them or get a fine and when I finally put Poppy back into school they were most courteous and considerate, so much so that it made me regret what Emily had said but I have learnt over the last twelve months that what is done, is done and there is very little we can do about it.

Emily lasted five months, February to June, and whilst the first month was all we could make it, it after that she got very ill and all the drugs she was on made her sleepy and as sick as dog. Not a night went by towards the end when she wasn't throwing up. Even Poppy mastered the art of holding her mother's hair back whilst Mummy was bringing up blood and the remains of her stomach in to the stinking bleachy toilet. It was both a pitiful sight and an uplifting one, to see the concern in such young eyes as what I saw in Poppy's.

During one of those five months we went back to the specialist, but this time we had Poppy with us. They had drawn blood from her a few days before and the results were back and the specialist looked the spit of Ruth-Dr-Knowles; all grey and solemn, as if they were carrying some great heavy burden and I suppose they were. I often think how hard it would be to deliver the news to parents that their young child has an incurable disease and there is nothing on this earth they can do to stop it. No transplant, no miracle cure, no nothing. You could have all the money and still you are up Shit Street without a paddle. It's an odd power those doctors have over the rest of us.

So the specialist told us the news and nothing went grey that time. I wished it would have so I didn't feel what I felt. It was as if I had everything and then nothing. Like I was an inch tall and the rest of the world couldn't see me even though I was there screaming for them to not tread on me. A vacuum of life, my soul drenched in black spit and being sucked into a black hole covered in hate and fear and loss and sadness and it was such an unbelievable sense of sadness that I can't get my mind to grasp how to even come up with the words to describe it. My stomach felt as if a sword had pierced it. My eyes were heavy, I feared they would fall out if I didn't put my hands up to stop them. Vomit bubbled everywhere and my insides twisted like a feasting alligator caught in a death roll. My veins felt empty and my skin as if it was being scraped with a blunt knife. Needles poked holes in my head, all the way through to my brain where they made mincemeat out of it and all thoughts that were pulsating there turned to vegetable mush.

Recently, my psychiatrist asked me if I could describe what it was that I felt that day when the sun shone and the clouds were all fluffy and white and I had just been told my daughter was going to die of the same rare disease my wife was dying from. I laughed in his stupid face and walked out flinging the cup of coffee his secretary had made me hard against the wall so that it smashed against his framed certificate from a university which clearly gave out diplomas in being a useless prick. I never went back to see him. I haven't completed the course that is recommended to those that have tried to take their own lives. Like a course from a dumb fucking smart arse knowitall dip shit acting like he knows all and is the answer to everything is going to change the decisions I have already made and am going to make.

On the sideboard, next to the picture of Emily wearing that flowery dress, the one where she smiles at me every day and I smile back at her, sits one of the bottles of drugs she was taking toward the end. I still don't know why I keep it. I threw all the others away. But this one refused to stay in the bin. Twice I have put it in the little blue bin in the bathroom and twice it has found its way back to the bedroom. I hate what those little pills did to her in the last stages but I suppose I should be grateful. Poppy isn't on medication, they are too powerful for her little, fragile body, so she has had to fight it on her own and she has lasted over a year. Twice as long as her mummy, so my brain puts the fact that Poppy survives longer without medication against the fact that Emily didn't with and comes up with outrageous assumptions that shouldn't dare see the light of day. Those pills, hidden behind white plastic and fading words remind me of days spent with her huddled up in bed, shivering and sweating and throwing up and shitting herself and having no control over what she said, did, think, feel. They say beautiful things don't die, who ever said that is a stupid.

I shake my head and stand up and take hold of the bottle and throw it into the bin because I can't make sense of it and rub my forehead and feel a headache coming.

The letterbox rattles and a few something's patter to the floor. It must be after and go downstairs and get the post and put it on the breakfast bar to be read later. I switch off the music because it's getting on my nerves and sit on the sofa in the front room and watch my reflection on the on the T.V and fall asleep to it.

When I wake up I panic and look at my phone and see that I have ten minutes till pick up time and my heart stops racing but that doesn't stop me from rushing around and leaving the house to go pick up my little anchor from school for the very last time. And when I pick her up I wave at the teacher and she waves at me and says how good Poppy has been and I look down and see that Poppy is smiling and then her teacher says she is looking forward to carrying on teaching her in Year 2 because she is such a clever girl. I nod along and say stuff that has no sense to it but I guess she isn't listening to me as she doesn't respond and all the other parents talk at me

talk at me

talk at me

TALK AT ME

and I couldn't give a shit what they say because I don't know them or want to know them. I have to get out of there so I say thank you for some reason and Poppy says goodbye and I take her away and they all smile but I don't because I am the only one that knows that Poppy isn't going up to Year 2, she isn't going to have the same teacher or see her little friends or go to any birthday parties or sleepovers because she is going to die, the doctors told me so, and they were right the first time around.
Shadow Man

I read Poppy a diluted version of the Ice Queen because she loves Anna and Elsa and we have read and watched Frozen more times that I can count. We wish each other a goodnight, kiss, hug, and then I watch her fall asleep which doesn't take long because she works hard at school and plays hard too. There is another reason why she is tired but I don't want to think about that tonight because thoughts like that mean I grab the bottle of Vodka and I wake up with a bad head and an upset stomach and I have been drunk enough over the last few months to know that it doesn't help anybody. When you talk to the bottle its vague responses only hurt the more.

Tonight I want to sketch. It is only 7:30 by the time she falls asleep and I have cleaned up the kitchen and locked the doors and I have plenty of time to draw up in the attic. I want to draw because it keeps me away from the beer and the bottle and makes me focus on things that aren't the things that my mind wants me to focus on; those hurtful memories. What I sketch might be utter dog turd but at least my fingers and my mind are kept busy which means that at least I won't fall down and drag others with me.

Up in the attic it's cool, fresh. I keep the window that looks out to the backs of the terraced houses behind my house open and I let the sounds of the city drift in. As always I look down to the house which has the large shed at the back of the garden and am not surprised to see the blue light glowing in its small windows. It's not a soft blue light, its harsh and full and odd and I know it will be on all night and into the early hours because on so many nights I have watched that shed wondering what goes on in there. There are lights on in the house too, and I think he lives alone because I never see anyone else in there, no shadows or signs of life. Sometimes the lights in the house go dark and I see the flicker of the television. I have binoculars next to me but I don't use them.

He's tinkering. I know so much as that. When the wind is right or the night is particularly quiet I can hear noises coming from that shed which isn't a shed but a workshop, I think. I hear the sounds of drilling and nailing and what I think is a rivet gun. I can sometimes see flashes of bright white light which must be from a welding torch. I haven't spoken to the other neighbours about it or him and what the hell he is doing in there because I don't speak to them and maybe they don't notice because they have other things going on in their lives and I have nothing except for a daughter who is sleeping and a mind that has fuck all else to do.

Tonight there is no wind and I can't hear anything coming from the little workshop. I look along the backs of the other houses; bare brick, painted, a few are pebble dashed but all are the same really and it goes on like that for row after row heading north until in the distance a hill rises up that goes from east to west and I can't see the end of it but I know it exists because I have been there. To both ends. With Emily.

Even the gardens are the same. They have subtle differences; some are grassy, some with patios, whilst one is overrun with bush and weed. The house next to the man that works in his shed is filled with piles of rubbish and all sorts of odd bits and bobs that have been there for donkey's years.

Does the shed worker man have a family? The house looks empty except for the things he has and I never see anyone else in there. Except that one time the guy with the grey suit came but that was years ago. Since then there has been no one to my knowledge, but then again it's not as if I am looking all the time.

I think about the families of the hoarder and the shed worker man as I draw in my sketch pad and when I am done I just sit and look at the black and white sketches I have made in the book that never seems to end. There is no colour in this book, a reflection of my current world. I feel that I am drained of all colour with the only splash of something bright being that of a pink hue which represents Poppy I suppose. I am surrounded by all that I have painted prior to the death of Emily and the diagnosis given to Poppy, and I wonder if I will ever paint in colour again.

~

The next morning my bouncing alarm clock goes off and a little body comes slithering under the covers with me. She's excited this morning and rightly so. This weekend it's Aunty Karen's two days of fun which means Poppy gets to do whatever she wants, eat whatever she wants and gets to stay up late and watch Disney films till she falls asleep snuggling the cuddly toy she will take and generally spend the weekend doing everything parents with routines hate.

We spend the next two hours breakfasting then playing and then packing her overnight bag and then finally changing and doing her hair which I have become very good at. We walk upstairs, her neat ponytail swaying side to side, and brush our teeth stood side by side looking into the mirror at one another. She grins at me and frothy toothpaste dribbles down her chin which makes her laugh and then I do the same. It makes a mess of the sink but who gives a shit. There used to be three of us doing this. Poppy in the middle. She always stood in the middle.

Soon there will be only one person brushing their teeth in this family sized sink and maybe I shall have to set an alarm or something on my phone to remind me to brush my teeth each day.

Just before ten there is a knock at the door and it's Karen. She is my sister not Emily's. I don't know why that is important. Maybe it's because I have only met Emily's sister twice, at our wedding and then at the funeral. She didn't make any form of contact with me at the funeral. At our wedding I remember how her sister looked at me stood with her younger sister and I could see that she hated us for being happy, hating me as the one making her happy, and since then there has been nothing from her. Not even when it all went to shit. It's as if she blames me for Emily dying. Like I wanted it to happen. Like it was me that put that disease into her body and forced her heart to stop beating.

"Good morning,' Karen says and lets herself in.

I smile and say, "How's it going?" and then add because it bugs me, "why don't you use the keys I gave you?"

She waves that off and asks where her bestest pal in the whole wide world is and when she walks by me her mass of blonde curly hair tickles my face. Karen is a perpetually happy person. Single and proud of it. Full of attitude and angst that in the past were the stuff that laws were changed for. Now she is just thought of as a high maintenance bitch. Where I am closed in and suffer a fool she is outspoken and will tell it to your face that you are a stupid twat. She is also a Wiccan, a practicing witch that is, but we don't talk about that.

She goes into the front room and Poppy goes wild and Karen matches her excitement by waving her hands around, as if she didn't care. Karen talks about what they are going to do and I see Poppy's face is engulfed with so much excitement I think she may burst. Right now Aunty Karen is mother in Poppy's eyes and I am grateful for that.

I must look ill because Karen looks up to me then, "You feeling okay?"

Smiling, because for some reason I think that if I smile everyone will think I'm happy I say, "No, I'm fine." And then I say, "Was up late doing some drawing last night is all."

"Oh. Still pencils?"

"Yep," and that is all I have to say on that so I move the conversation on, "So, what have you two ladies got planned for the weekend?"

They look at each other and share some girly secret that I don't want to know about because I love the idea of Poppy having secrets. Karen whispers to Poppy if they should tell Daddy what they are going to be up to and Poppy scrunches up her face and laughs and says no and Karen looks at me with take that Daddy-o eyes and I can't help but laugh and walk into the kitchen to fetch Poppy's princess bag chuckling as I go.

Karen joins me in the kitchen. She smells of cinnamon scented candles and freshly sawn timber and it's a smell that I like but can never repeat. I hand her Poppy's bag and a USB stick containing all the shows that are on the current loop.

"Oh joy." She says and I know what she means although I have now become accustomed to the shows and know all the words.

"Do you need any money?"

"Don't be silly, you save it for your beers with the boys. You are going tonight, right?"

"I suppose."

She pats my chest and kisses me on the cheek. "Go. You'll enjoy it. You need to start living, James. Get out, breathe a bit. I don't expect you to forget her, you never will, but you have to get on with it, ya know? I don't want to sound all Hollywood or like some dumb big breasted vacant minded whore on TV but it's been nearly a year, it's time to move on."

I look down to the floor. "Yeah I know. I'll go tonight. But the first mention of her and I'm gone."

"That's your choice......Right then, enough of this crap, I'm off."

Karen turns and bellows, "Poppy, come give your Daddy a kiss and hug." And as quick as a flash my little angel is hugging my leg and I have to bend right down to get my kiss.

I whisper in her ear, "You be good." and know that I don't have to because she is good but I say it because that what us dads do.

She tells me she will and I walk her to the door and Karen is already sat in her new model Fiat 500 and patting the lime green child seat which matches the exterior perfectly and then I notice the glasses she is wearing are also a shade of bright green as well as the hair band she has holding her mad hair back.

"That your new broomstick?"

Karen sticks her middle finger up at me and pokes her tongue out. Even her tongue stud is lime green and I shake my head.

She straps Poppy in and she waves at me and I wave back. The car starts and the two of them start to laugh and I hear the Frozen soundtrack kick in as the car pulls away. The drone of the engine fades but I don't go back inside. Just stand in the doorway, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Breathing in the smells of the city and smelling nothing and then I think about all the people that get to be what they want to be and do all the things they want to do and that my Poppy wont. Just simply; wont. She won't get to shine like she should of.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I think about, I haven't told Karen that her niece is dying.

~

I potter about the house, have lunch at one and then go on pottering. I try to read but can't focus on the words printed on the curling paper and that grates me as I enjoy reading because it takes me away from here and puts me out there, wherever the author wants me to go, whether that be in Brooklyn thanks to Selby, or Cannery Row at the hands of the mighty Steinbeck, perhaps somewhere in Norway thanks to the oddly poetic words of Petterson or on some plane being fucked into a stupor by a sex addict thanks to Chuck, I go there willingly with those guys.

My wardrobe is sparse. A couple of what you would class as going out shirts and some jeans but the rest is t-shirts and shorts because most of the time I am hot, even in the winter months I cavort myself in shorts and t-shirts and perhaps a hoodie if the house gets chilly. I choose the attire for tonight making sure none of it was bought or seen by Emily and I get ready.

I am meeting the guys down the Cock and Hen at seven but I am ready at six so I sit in the single chair in the front room looking at the floor. Outside a car drones by. It's not a busy road, not a cut through, but its Saturday night and mid-summer so the roads are full of taxis.

My phone vibrates and it's a text from Karen letting me know Poppy is alright. The time on the phone is 18:08, it feels to me as though I have been sat in this chair for an hour.

I text Bill who lives down Clyde Avenue, which is one road down, to see if he is ready and fancies heading off now. In the proceeding silence I watch the cars go by and the road I live in lives its own little life separate from mine when before we were linked. A car stops outside number 88, a few houses up on the other side of the road and two girls – one I know and the other I have never seen before– rush to the cab all giggles and short skirts and stretchy boob tubes. They are girls that don't know who the Spice Girls are but dance to their songs in clubs seething with sexed up teenagers and pissed uped fuck wits all grinding and sweating and dancing to music that has a self-sustaining beat. Both girls have long legs and wear strappy high heels that men and women think are slutty but in completely different ways. Emily wasn't one for such shoes, though there was a red pair that are still kept in a box of bits I haven't opened in a while and probably never will as the thought of using those things on some other woman and that woman using them on me makes me want to throw up.

My phone vibrates with another text and I get a little twang in the gut as hope trickles in. It's from Bill and yes, let's get an early beer before the others turn up and lower the tone, which I smile at because he is the one that always puts an end to any conversation with a well-placed C-bomb or a decent but controversial paedophile joke.

The night out routine kicks in; curtains drawn, lights on, check for wallet, keys, phone, and that the oven I haven't had on all day is off, which it is, and I head out the front door and onto the pub with my hands in my pockets because I haven't got anybody's hand to hold onto.

~

By eight the pub is heaving but thanks to the recent change in law at least it isn't full of smoke. It is the most generic pub in town with no character to speak of. Just tables and chairs and a bar and toilets and crisps and drink and windows and a door. It's that colour of brown that all pubs are, there are other colours but they all seem to be more shades of brown. It's not cheap, not expensive either, and those behind the bar generally pour a good Guinness. The Cock and Hen – or just simply 'The Cock' – is a place of many faces. Not just the young but the old, not just the bright but the sluggish, not just the drunkards but the sippers and not just the sluggers but the head-downers. They all drink together, mix together, and usually without many raised voices or flaying arms anchoring for a fight. When there is a raised voice the bar merges into one seething mass and that soon weakens the argument and whomever it was that tried to raise his or hers station leaves with their head down and to many jeers and throaty laughter.

They drink here because they always have and they think they are important and that they live on Coronation Street or in EastEnders and that they are a part of their own reality T.V show. I couldn't care less if this place burned to the ground and only drink here because it is close to home and far from the night clubs those girls were going to that I have grown out of like I have grown out of listening to Guns and Roses and smoking weed.

For the most part I enjoy myself. Word must have gotten around because nobody asks me about Emily or how I am doing. They ask about Poppy, but not about her illness because none of them know and I answer politely and try not to go into too much detail as none of them have kids so don't understand and the reality of it is none of them really give a shit. When I finish my last pint and leave alone to go home to an empty house the boys all bid me a drunkard laddish goodnight and beg me to stay the course and to embark on the lock in that old man Greene behind the bar has promised but I keep on refusing; shaking my head as I leave the pub.

The door slams shut behind me. There's a metaphor there but I'm fucked if I know what it is.

In the cool night air, not quite black because this time of year it never does fully darken, I realise that I am drunker than I was inside.

"Lack of practice."

I stumble across the road which is packed during the day but empty now that it is just after eleven.

I have two ways home. The slow way and the quick way. The slow way is following the roads the way the council intended when constructing this place, the quick way is across a piece of land that was once a bus depot but is now a flattened pile of dirt surrounded by a chain link fence with more holes in it that a whores tights. At the end of that piece of land is an old service road that turns into an alleyway thanks to a garage conversion and that alleyway comes out right opposite my house. Going the quick way cuts out most of the journey and before I can even decide I am hopping over the fence and my feet wobble precariously on bricks and rubble as I land.

I have made the journey many times and it is well used by those that know it is there,

What I don't know, but will in a few minutes, is that in the alleyway ahead there are two guys that like cheap cider and speed, and they need money and don't care what they do to get it.

~

I don't see the two of them as they are hidden in shadow and before I can react one of the addicts launches himself at me and smacks me on the side of the head with what feels like a brick. There is a flash of light in my head as I fall to the floor trying to clutch the hurt bit on the side of my head but just end up flailing my arms until both elbows and arse hit the floor. Both men are laughing at me and they whisper some dreaded evil which fills me with fear and I have never been beaten up before, not never, and I feel some warmth at the side of my head where they hit me and I wish the drunkenness would come back as I really don't want to feel what is going to happen to me. I don't try to escape or to shuffle back or to plead. There seems little point. I know they want my money and just simply giving it to them won't be good enough as I can see in their eyes they mean to harm me. Not kill me, they aren't that desperate, but there is a primal urge taking them over now, they are strong and I am weak and don't we all sometimes get that same buzz?

They move in now, one of them smiles at me, "Get up." He says, so I do as told, struggling to my feet, knowing that in a few seconds I shall be back on my arse again.

"Please." I say through a mouth that is painfully alive. My head is swimming but not enough to take the ache away.

"No.' the other addict says and his mouth is surrounded by ulcers that look as mean as he does. I smell his breath even though he is a few feet away and it's stale and harsh and not something you want to smell.

Both men have clenched fists and I look down before closing my eyes and see that one of the men, the one with mean ulcers, is wearing a pair of worn out Dockers Boots and my stomach and chest tense in preparation for the kicking I am about to take.

There is a shuffle in front of me. I try and let my body loosen, relaxing my muscles to absorb the blows because I am sure I have heard that said somewhere before but I don't do a very good job and feel even more tense than I did. I brace and force my eyes to stay shut.

And then I hear something. At first I don't know what it is but understand it for what it is. It's a ticking clock. Like you'd expect a grandfather clock to sound in a large hallway or study, this was the same, though this tick wasn't surrounded by wood but metal. I don't know why I think that but there isn't the same echo that wood gives but instead a dull clonking type sound. Its mechanical, I think, and picture complex cogs turning inside a machine that's all brass and shiny silver rods.

I slowly open my eyes and see that the two men that had their drugged up eyes on me aren't facing me anymore and are now looking at the man that has joined us in the alleyway and I am sure that the tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk noise is coming from him but can't be sure as that sound is over powered by the two men going for him instead of me. I am frozen to the spot and don't mind that as I wouldn't know how to throw a punch even if I tried. I go for my phone, perhaps to call the police, I don't know, I'm not running on all cylinders right now and my hand just wraps around the flat cold piece of electronic wizardry and I hold it like I would hold my father's hand when I was a boy and scared of what they were going to do to that horse with the broken legs.

The man in shadow moves quickly and there is a jerky way to how he moves but that doesn't stop him from grabbing Docker Boots by the throat and holding him there whilst the other man flops to the floor as he takes a fearsome looking right hook which connects with a cracking thud against his temple.

Docker Boots tries to scream but nothing comes out but wheezy stinky air. The shadow man lifts him off the floor and draws him closer so that their noses are almost touching. The strength to do that I can't calculate but know that it isn't any normal man that can do that. I don't see what happens but a couple of seconds seem to tick by; I know they tick by because I can hear that tick-clonk, tick-clonk again but behind that there is a whirring sound like a computer's hard drive working hard to isolate the piece of information it needs.

The whirring stops. Docker Boots is thrown against the wall of the alleyway and lands next to his speed taking pal and they are both still. In the nothing orange light of the alleyway I see on the floor a small puddle being formed around the brick and the two men.

I take my hand out of my pocket and stand there blinking. I don't really know what to think and then I say, "Thank you." which seems so remote from what I want to say but that is all I can muster and all the time I can hear that tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk and am positive that it is coming from the man in the shadows ahead of me.

He turns then and I think he is going to leave without saying anything and I hear the whirring of a computer's hard drive and now the orange glow of the street lights illuminates his face and I know that face because I have seen it from my attic window. His mouth opens and he goes to say something but he doesn't and he just turns and walks away and the tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk follows him. Then it is gone.

~

I lean against the wall and rest my shoulder up against the bare brick and take a few breaths but it does nothing to compose me. I don't really look at the two men on the floor as I walk past them and give them a wide berth because I have seen the movies and played video games and am relieved when an arm doesn't reach out at my foot.

Once home I run up into the attic and look down into the garden with the shed and the soft blue light and it's how it is every night only tonight he isn't in the shed working, he is in the house because I can see him in the top window and he is looking over to me like Norman Bates in Psycho looked out of his window onto the motel where women spent their last nights. I notice that my hands are shaking and the ache in my head flares up but I understand that I am lucky and that the pain I am feeling is nothing compared to what I could be feeling if the two men had had their way.

"Shadow Man." I say.

Then I remember the sound that seemed to surround him so I shake my head through chattering teeth for now I feel cold and scared and lonely.

"Clockwork Man."

That sounds stupid, but to me it's not stupid, so I keep on shaking my head as the man who saved me from a beating walks away from the window and into the darkness of his home and I hope he hasn't kept his dead mums body in the basement dressed up and ready for Sunday at church.

In the bathroom I wash my face and the side of my head is sore but there isn't much blood.

I grab my duvet and pillow from the bedroom built for two but now sleeps one and take it into Poppy's empty room and fold it into a makeshift bed on the floor. This is the only room in the house that still feels alive and I go to sleep thinking of that and that soon it won't be.

Behind me, in the darkness, Poppy's alarm clock ticks and tocks but it's not the same sound as what I heard in the alley. It's just not the same.
Milk Bottle

It's ten in the morning and I am not yet dressed and I sit in just my pants, alone at the breakfast bar, reading the back of a Rice Krispies box for the twentieth time. I've decided that Snap, Crackle and Pop, can go fuck themselves.

My head hurts, both at the side where it was hit and right in the middle because of the Guinness I consumed. The coffee I'm drinking is sour and hot and without sugar because I couldn't be bothered to open the new packet and pour it into the jar let alone spoon it into the mug.

It's hot outside, but dark and cool in the kitchen and I've kept the lights off so it feels like a winter's morning. I try not to think about last night, I know I was lucky and dodged a bullet and to have just a sore head is a heavenly surrender compared to what I could have been suffering from if he hadn't turned up.

~

I have come to a conclusion this morning, one that did not take long to reach. I am going to tell Karen about Poppy, about her illness, and what lay in store for us all. I shall tell her once Poppy has gone to bed tomorrow night and hope for the best. That's all I can do. I have made my bed and so I must sleep in it.

Karen will be angry and I will face a barrage from her and rightly so, I deserve it, I should have told her a long time ago like I promised Emily I would but that promise was said when Emily was literally in her death bed and I was knelt down beside her wishing with everything that I had for her to be saved. I couldn't go through with such an undertaking. After seeing all those faces stretched bare with loss and grief I couldn't bring myself to unleash further hurt and sorrow upon already lost souls. In a selfish way I wanted all their pity to be bestowed upon me. I am not good with sorrow, with other people's sorrow that is. My own consumes me enough, enough to take my own life if the truth be known. It pains me to see others coming to me for help, for a life support when they can clearly see I am struggling to keep my own shit together.

I look out of the kitchen window and see nothing new and so finish my coffee. Yesterday's mail is uneventful; bills and junk mail all in my name. I hold onto the bit of junk mail a little longer, transfixed to the shiny bit of paper card that was shoved through my door. The company uses a cog as its logo, it reminds me of the man that saved me last night and I sigh at the use of the word 'saved' which is quite a big word but an apt one considering what could have been done to me. In the disjointed memories I have of last night I am sure that I gave my thanks. Or tried to at least. I think that he just looked at me and then turned and headed off into the orange night. I did see him again; at his window, but that's all I can remember. That and something about The Bates Motel.

I go upstairs and get dressed and know what I should do. I have no excuses not to, his house won't be that hard to find, I've been looking at it for over a year.

~

Outside the air is warm, city stale, and there is no breeze, not even a salty one rolling in off the sea that is only one mile to the east and three in any other direction. My head is freed of the ache but my temple feels sore as I walk down the road and around the corner past the alleyway where it all happened. I look over there once, quickly, but it is empty apart from the brick that was used against me. Just four people know of last night. The alley way can't speak its secrets.

The road my hero lives down is identical to mine. All the roads around here are. I find comfort in these roads and avenues that I have known since childhood and walk them knowing where I am going and where they go. However, unlike those times, I no longer walk them with a sense of carelessness for times have changed, last night being good evidence.

I pass a couple of houses and a car passes by. Across the road some teenagers are loud and playful and go about their business ignoring me whilst I watch them. There is something about teenagers, they have an aura about them that seems to put every other age group on edge. You don't feel it when you are one of them. You feel like you aren't the same, that you are different to everyone else and therefore insignificant. There must be a reason for this, a reason as to why a teenagers mind works so differently from everyone else's.

One of them looks around at me but I don't stop looking at him. I was about his age when I first considered that the rest of my life was spread out before me and back then being thirty seemed like so very far away. All that he has is ahead of him, all the decisions he will make and the lives he will impact, all of it still yet to be written – or already written if you believe in such things, which I don't – and maybe he will find love soon, that first love which never leaves you and instructs you on what the rest of your days are going to be like and how you will treat the lovers you have if that first one ever fades. We pass on opposite sides of the road and it is as if I am looking into my past and he is looking into his future that he does not yet know. But the moment is gone as he raises his middle finger at me and then charges off after his mates.

Fucking teenagers.

That's when I smell it. The hoarder's hovel. It's still three doors away but the stink of it in this stale lifeless air is stifling to say the least. Its rotten food and mould, its damp upholstery and soggy cardboard, its wet bush that smells like two day old cum stained tissues. It makes my stomach twist and I pick up the pace and hold my hand over my mouth and nose but that does no good and when I reach the house the smell subsides due to the large wooden fence that rises up and blocks it off. But it is still there, hanging about like a dogs fart.

This three bedroomed house was built at the turn of the century, around 1890, and built to look like a smaller version of a grand Victorian home that once graced the cobbled streets of London.

I open the squeaky gate and walk down the forecourt making sure not to let the gate slam shut. The forecourt is covered in little red tiles worn down to a dullness that will never shine again. There are no plants in the forecourt, just a bin that's empty and a green bin that looks as if it has never seen a piece of recycling in its life. The brick wall is a brick wall. The outside of the house is all original, untouched by the movement of time and invention. It has no double-glazing, the windows are still wooden framed and sashed and it is all bare red brick with a study-room-green glazed tile around the bottom, which rises up until it meets the bottom of the window frame of the bay window. It is the same build type as my house, but different in so many ways. My house is of the now; this house is of when it was built.

I knock on the front door - which looks as if it were painted yesterday in the same shade of green as the tiles - because it doesn't have a doorbell and I hope he is in so I can get out of the heat and the smell.

There is no answer so I give it a few more seconds and knock again, a little harder this time. I glance down and see an old wire framed milk bottle holder with the little dial pointed at the number 2. It is just like the one my mother used to use when I was a kid and I cannot remember the last time I saw a glass milk bottle let alone one of these types of holders. Then I try to think back to the last time I saw a milkman and my mind can't seem to remember.

There is no answer, all the energy I have built up and all the words I thought of saying are useless, and I let them go. I turn away from the door looking at the milk bottle holder and when I look up there is a man stood at the end of the forecourt on the other side of the gate. He is partially hidden, with half of him behind the stinking bush, so all I can see is a head, a single shoulder, and one hand holding onto the gate. He has dirty hands, long gnarled finger nails make my skin crawl. My first thoughts are that he is a tramp after a fag or some loose change but then I recognise that dirty face grinning madly at me but I do not know the name, only that he lives in the hovel.

"Not in." and he coughs so hard that I think he is going to fall over and apt to die right there on the floor and that would be just my luck.

"Yeah, I can see that." Christ he's got a mad grin and now that his mouth is open I can see he has no teeth and he coughs again only this one is wheezy and screams of an illness that lurks deep down inside.

"Always goes out at ten and won't be back till twelve. On the dot. Every day. Like clockwork."

Tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk, I hear in my head.

"Thanks." And that's all I have to say because I don't do small talk. I am sweating as the sun beats down on me and the floor tiles seem to bounce the heat back up at me and I am surrounded by the heat and the subtle smell of shit and the need of the dirty man to have a conversation seems to hang in the air.

"Pleasure." The man nods and keeps on grinning and now I see, as I get closer that he is not only old but as old as anything I have ever seen before. It is off putting, I don't know where to look, and so I just look at him and into his dark brown eyes that reflect nothing back at me but me looking at him. For a few moments I am stuck in a paradox of me looking at me. The old man moves away from the gate and I open it taking care not to touch it where he had been touching it. I don't let the gate slam shut and take a step back, away from the man who is dressed in a black suit with frayed edges and a white shirt that is now beige with grime and I can see the sweat running off his brow. I get the feeling that I am going to throw up and have to swallow hard to push it back down.

I go to say thank you as I walk by but no words come out and I just grin inanely at him and he must take this as an invitation because he says, "If you fancy you could leave a message with me and I could pass it on when he gets back?"

"You know him then? You'll see him today?" Thinking for some reason that the Clockwork Man, as I called him last night now that I remember, wouldn't have any friends or family, and I don't know why I think that.

"Not really. Never spoke with him. But there's a first time for everything."

I laugh then because I don't know if that was supposed to be a joke or not and he laughs and we both stand there laughing at something that isn't funny.

I wave a hand of disregard at him and start to head off but this person will not be shut up:

"If you ever are in the mood to buy a few trinkets, then come and give old Rag-n-Bone a knock. Got loads of stuff round the back. May look like a garden full of shite but there is some finery in there, if you know where to look. If I don't answer when you come round just yell for Sammy and I shall her you."

"I will." knowing that I won't and I walk at pace back the way I came knowing that he is watching me every step of the way until I am out of site.

I stop off at the corner shop to get some milk and the newspaper I have no intention of reading but it feels good to have it. As I'm handing over the money I ask the guy behind the counter, who I think is called Tariq but am unsure so I don't call him anything, "Anybody mention something about two guys getting beat up down the alley last night?"

He shakes his head and looks at the bruise that is swelling on the side of my head. He doesn't like small talk either, he hands me my change, I go home, and when I get home, its only 11:05 so I sit down in the front room and think about nothing whilst holding the newspaper.

~

At just after two in the afternoon I wake up to someone knocking at the door. When I open the door, before I even see who it is, I know who it is because I can hear a muffled but all too familiar, tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk, coming from him.

I stare blankly at him first because I have never seen him in the daylight before. He has bright blue eyes that shine even under the shadow of his flat cap. His face is long and slender, good looking in an old-fashioned kind of way. I imagine him wearing a black suit with matching bowler hat and he is on his way to work at the bank because he is a gentleman. His mouth is a thin pink line, his nose is small and crooked at the bridge, and I wonder how it was broken. But it's his eyes. I can't take my eyes off them and I realise that I must have been quiet for nearly a minute so I smile and go to say something even though my throat is dry. But he beats me to it and says, "You called for me this morning?" and he speaks cleanly, not posh, but each word is a definable statement and when he speaks, I am sure that the tick-clonk noise lessens ever so slightly.

"Yes, I did. I wanted to say thank you... for last night...For what you saved me from, down there." I nod my head in the direction of the alley and his eyes look over. A couple of things happen at the same time as he does this; the tick-clonk noise increases and the sound of a hard drive whirs into life.

When he looks back to me, his pupils dilate like no other eyes I have ever seen do before and I am mesmerised by them.

"There is no need to thank me," my visitor states and then continues on and both his accompanying noises drop in volume, "You were in trouble and I was passing by that way. I accept your gratitude and may I suggest you choose another path home in future?"

I laugh a little then, he sounds like a posh Robocop so I don't really know if he was being funny and he tilts his head to one side like a curious dog so I stop laughing and put my hands in my pockets. I consider asking if he would like to come in but can see by the way he twitches that he wants to go and if he were to accept my invitation I'm not sure what I would offer.

"Alright," but I need to get out what I wanted to say when I called on him, "If it wasn't for you...?" I leave it hanging for him to fill in the blank of his name and for a few seconds he says nothing and the hard drive whirs away in the background and I wonder if he can hear it. Before he answers, his pupils dilate.

"Jacob."

"If it wasn't for you, Jacob, then I wouldn't be stood here right now. I would probably be down St Margaret's being fed dinner through a straw."

The smile I offer is not returned and I can see that this fellow hasn't smiled in a long time, or frowned for that matter, as there isn't a wrinkle on his face. A face has seen some years.

There is a silence then, apart from the tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk. A motorbike screams down one of the main roads that runs north to south and a crow calls to its mates from one of the chimneys somewhere above my head.

I can't think of much else to say. Small talk isn't my thing. "I'm James, by the way." I offer my hand.

He takes it in his and we shake hands like gentlemen. I keep my grip soft but don't go limp, his is similar but I feel the weight of his hand for just an instant and it fills heavy. Too heavy.

"Pleased to meet you, James."

"You too, Jacob."

He nods, turns, and heads back down the forecourt. There is no gate, the little post that it was attached to is still poking out of the ground, and he grabs it and rubs a thumb over the bare metal. He stands still and even though I can't hear it, I know that something - something in him - is whirring as he thinks.

Jacobs stands to the side, looks at the post and then to me he says, "I have a spare gate you can have."

It was such an odd thing to say I don't immediately answer and the crow continues to call for whatever it is that it wants and I want it to shut up already.

He seems to know what I am going to say. "I can fit it. An hour's work, no more." He just stares at me and me at him and then I start to think that I don't want to be like the hoarder in the other street, alone, dirty, smelly. I start to feel a sense of aloneness I have not yet felt even with the loss of Emily and my lack of consistent friends and my need to force myself away from anything that seems like it will end in friendship or commitment.

"Alright. If you don't mind that is?"

He shakes his head.

"I shall be here for eleven."

"Okay, if you want to. But afterwards its lunch and a couple of beers in the garden. Another thank you, but a slightly better one."

Again, he pauses, considering, calculating, working it out as if I have asked him a rather puzzling riddle and I can't hear it but know what I would hear if I were closer to him.

"I am fussy with my food."

I know instantly that it is a lie because Jacob stops looking at me and looks at the post where tomorrow he shall affix a new gate.

"That's no problem; I'm no great cook anyway. Just beers then." I say it with a little authority in my voice to try and let him know that I won't take no for an answer and deep down I want to know this man, he seems interesting, a little different but I like different.

"Beers will be fine."

I smile, Jacob does not. Instead, he turns and heads off down the road with his hands by his side and his head looking straight ahead. A little bit of me wishes that I hadn't offered the invitation.

I watch him until he rounds the bend and am gone and then I shut the door and go to the back of the house because I can't remember what state the garden is in. I spend the rest of the day cleaning it up and making it look semi-loved. I even clean out the barbecue just in case.

~

That evening I get a call from Karen and my heart stops because she never calls, only texts. The only time she did call was when Poppy banged her head on the television stand and she wanted me to sing her a lullaby to make it all better. I'm staring at the phone, panicking, I answer it whilst grabbing my set of car keys.

"Hello."

"Hi Daddy!" Poppy screams and it's so loud that I pull the phone away from my head and hear the speaker distort. When Poppy has finished and I can hear laughter I put the phone back to my ear, "Hi Poppy, you having a good time with Aunty Karen."

"Yeah." Then she goes quiet but I can make out some whispering and giggling and I keep the phone tight to my ear and put the keys back into the jar.

A little voice says, "Can I stay at Aunty Karen's for two more days please?"

"Whys that, petal?"

"Erm...because I want to go to park and then to the...to the...the show!" I pull the phone away again, the speaker distorts, there is laughter from both Poppy, and Karen and I start to laugh.

I put the phone back to my ear as I heard Karen asking for the phone back.

"Hi, Aunty Karen." I say trying to stop myself laughing but she has the giggles and it reminds me of when we were both little and she would curl up into a ball and laugh until she literally wet herself or farted or both on the rarest, funniest of occasions.

"So, what have you got planned?"

She finally composes herself. "She really wants to go to the Cinderella play down at the Circle Theatre in Southampton. It's my fault, I showed her the damn picture and since then it's all she had been going on about. Plus Carol from next door has a girl about the same age as Poppy so I organised a play date. You don't mind do you?"

"Of course not. She loves spending time with her jaunty Aunty Karen." I think about it and then decide to say it even though I know that in a few days I am going to break my sister's heart, "Thank you for doing all this for her. I try all I can but there are something's I just can't get right or just don't do because I'm bone tired or I don't know how to do them or where to look. Without you I wouldn't have her."

The phone goes silent and I am sure I hear sobs and I lean against the kitchen worktop and place my head against the cold door of the top cupboard. For a second I think I might join her in crying but I cannot. I don't have any tears left to shed.

When her sobs fade, she says with a wet sounding voice and a sniffy nose, "That's the nicest thing you have ever said to me, big bro. Such a shame it revolves around......well we don't have to talk about that." She takes in a big breath and lets it out and I know she is going over some mantra in her head about being a strong woman. "How was last night?"

I decide its best not to tell her. "Yeah, it was good. I left before the lock in started. Haven't heard anything from the others yet so I guess it was a heavy one."

"Lightweight."

"Witch."

I lift my head from the kitchen unit. "So, when will I get to see my daughter?"

"Erm, mid-week, I shall let you know."

"Do you need anything? Clothes, toys, prescription drugs?"

"Nah. Were all-good. But if I do, I have a key."

We say our goodbyes and the phone is handed over to Poppy and she pretends to give me a kiss and I do likewise and I tell her to be good and to give Aunty Karen a hug and I know that she will. The phone call is ended and the house falls silent.

I spend the rest of the day drawing and when night descends upon the city and the sky is a wash of Halloween orange and endless dark blue with twinkling lights and my hands hurt and my back is a sack of tight bones and misshapen muscles I finally go to bed. I peak at the house where Jacob lives before I close the curtains. The soft blue light is on in the shed that makes me feel safe.

When the curtains are closed and I am lying in bed I think about him and the strange noises that seem to come from him and it's like nothing I have heard or seen before in or on a person.

They are a part of him.

Is Jacob like me, alone? It seems that way.

"You're not alone." I tell myself and I am right. I still have a daughter; she hasn't been taken away from me just yet. I have a sister too, as well as five friends I know I can count on. That is not being alone. Perhaps when Poppy is gone I will feel truly alone and useless as my only use at this moment in time is raise Poppy and once she is gone...

"It may not happen." I think myself a fool for thinking that because it will happen, the doctors were right the first time and all the other times before that so why should they be wrong this time.

I have no comfort tonight and I can feel my thoughts turning dark so I get up and go into the bathroom. In the cabinet are some sleeping pills my doctor gave me and so I put one in my mouth and swallow it with a handful of cold water.

I get to bed.

I sleep.

~

I wake up to the sound of birds twittering. It takes me a while to come around thanks to the pills I took the night before and I flop around the top of the house not really knowing what I am doing.

When I finally make it downstairs, I see a note has been posted through my letterbox. It is a piece of A4 folded neatly in half. On the front it simply reads, James. It has been typed on a typewriter, not by hand or by computer. I know whom it is from and as I unfold it, the paper is crisp, new, and thick and not your usual cheap thin crap, I step into the front room and sit down, it reads:

James, sorry for the inconvenience, but I am unable to make it as planned. Instead of 11:00, I shall be there for 12:00.

Jacob.

I fold the letter and place it on the coffee table where the laptop sits and is surrounded by comics and the book that I am currently trying to read.

"Shall be worth it?" I shake my head, which makes me instantly dizzy, and I look down and see the time on the Blu-ray player flashing back at me in electric blue: 06:35 it tells me.

"Fuck sake." I let my body flop to the side and I fall asleep looking at the note from Jacob.

When I wake up the world has moved on to 10:55.
Fixer

Through the window, I watched him work.

Jacob carried the gate himself, appearing not to break a sweat, and when he placed it carefully in the forecourt, he didn't arch his back so to stretch out the sore muscles or wipe his sweating brow because I don't think he was tired by any of it.

Jacob wore the same clothes as yesterday and his head was still obscured by the flat cap even though it was hot.

I struggled to make out the gate; his body was blocking it no matter what angle I peeked through the window at. He was a confident worker. Used his hands like tools and his tools like precision implements. Surgical, I thought to myself. He pulled and pushed at the metal, shaving it here and there and using his little spot welder kit to strengthen the bars that the gate would eventually swing on. He used a small spirit level made of wood to make sure everything was just so and admired the gate post from a step back like a painter admiring the landscape he was just about to paint.

"Metal is this guy's canvas." I knew I wasn't too far off.

From a smaller, bluish grey toolbox, he produced a pot of paint and a small paintbrush and painted the metal post with soft brushstrokes. When all that was done, the paint tin and brush were put away, the spirit level placed back in its gunny bag and the other tools placed into the toolbox, he took hold of the gate and placed it onto the gatepost. He gave it a few test swings, adjusted the handle so that it clicked neatly into the small latch on the other side and then tested it a few more times to be sure.

I am surprised to see that only one hour has past, it feels like I have been at the window watching him work for only five minutes. I shake my head in awe of what this person accomplished in so little time and I head toward the front door and open it just in time to see him smooth his hand over the top of the gate and smile at his work.

"Good morning." I say and am disappointed when the smile leaves his face and his lips go back into that thin line.

I can still hear it, though today its fainter, as if muffled by a silencer, tick-clonk, tick-clonk, tick-clonk.

Jacob nods at me and takes a step back so that he is standing next to the black bin and his toolboxes which are filled with wondrous looking implements that for a minute I try and gauge what they are and how they could be used but I am no craftsman so I haven't a clue.

"What do you think?" Jacob points to the gate.

The gate is simple. It has a thin square frame of black metal. Inside that square frame, three vertical strands of metal give it some rigidity. What isn't simple about it are the handle and the design on the top of the gate. The handle is an ornate dolphin made from brass and reflects the sun so much that it hurts the eye just to look at it. On top of the gate are spirals of thin metal and amongst the spirals are carved brass petals with beautiful spring flowers which are also made from brass and as I look closer I can see little ladybirds on those petals and in the middle of the design is a rose made from copper, and in the centre of that rose is a small ornate fairy with wings made from the thinnest metal I have ever seen. In the harsh light, it looks translucent.

I am lost for words and stare at the gate with my mouth open and my eyes wide. Constructed and grafted in the blue light of his work shed for what must have been all day and all night. I am struck dumb by it and oddly close to tears as I look to him and his blank face and then back to the shining metallic glory he has made for me, for Poppy. It is something I would like to share with Emily, but that is now impossible and the weight of her loss hits me again and I am getting fed up of it always coming back to her.

"I'm lost for words. I don't know what to say." Then I say it before I can stop myself and once I say it I hate myself because when anybody says it to me I want to grab them by the throat and smash their teeth out, "You made this?"

Jacob nods and brushes some flex of metal from his jeans, they glint in the sunshine as they fall.

I offer my hand which seems pathetic and he shakes it and when he does I say thank you very softly because any louder and my words might break. He must see this, sense it, and I hear the whirring noise I think I am getting used to.

Behind his eyes there is something going on.

"I'm glad you like it, James. Is your daughter here?"

The handshake ends and I put my hand in my pocket. How does he know I have a daughter? My face must give away what I am thinking.

"I have not been prying. I sometimes see you both in the park. She seems to like the flowers, the roses in particular."

He's right. She does love the flowers and I don't know why I've never noticed that before and then I picture my garden and what I could do for Poppy if I only put in some fucking effort.

"You're right, now you mention it, she does like the roses. But no, Poppy's not here. She's with her aunty for a few days."

He doesn't look upset by that but I see his pupils dilate unnaturally.

"Poppy," he says, "That's a lovely name. My mother was named Poppy."

"Really? We named her after Emily's mum." I lean over to the gate still enthralled by the detail he has put into it.

"Emily, is that your wife?"

My hand freezes on the rose and I stare at the fairy in its centre. The fairies face isn't copper anymore, it's now Emily's face and I blink and hold that blink and when I open my eyes all is normal again.

"Was." I mutter and I want to change the subject even though it hasn't yet begun.

I hear the whirring noise kick up a gear and now that I am close to him when he reaches down and picks up his toolbox, I am sure that the familiar tick-clonk noise that seems to come from deep inside of him alters, like a car's gears may mash together if not changed properly.

"Beer." Jacob says and it isn't a question.

~

I walk Jacob through the house after leaving his toolboxes in the front room. He looks about, he doesn't say anything, and I don't mind because I wouldn't care if someone were showing me around their house. In the kitchen, I offer him a beer and take it from the fridge. We both drink it straight from the bottle. I see that he is looking around and I let him because I have nothing to hide. He seems to pay particular attention to the letters on the notice board, I look over there and then back to him, and when I do, he is looking at me.

"Everything okay?" I ask, and he nods and takes a big gulp of his beer so I grab another two and escort him into the garden where I have set up our cosy seating arrangement. When I sit down I realise that even though I have been hearing it I haven't given Jacobs accompanying noise a second thought, but now that I think about that noise I hear it and I want to know what it is, why it is.

Jacob is wearing his good old flat cap, a long sleeved shirt and jeans. I am wearing shorts and t-shirt and feel as if I am roasting in my own skin. He must be on fire under those clothes but from an outward appearance, it seems that that's not the case.

"You have a nice home, James."

"Thanks. Garden's a bit shabby but to be honest we bought it from a friend who fixes up houses and then sells them on so all the work was done before we got here. All I did was splash a few coats of paint on the walls."

"That's the house. You have made a nice home for your family. That is where true value is: family. Though I fear these days that that value has diminished somewhat."

"Yeah, I suppose, we always try to do what's right for our family. Do you have any?"

Pupils dilate and the sound of his inner hard drive hangs in the stagnant air and for the first time he looks upset by this unwanted noise, frustrated even. When the noise runs down and his pupils fix in place he simply says, "No."

I use the bottle opener to remove the cap from the bottle, hand him the beer, take the empty he hands me, and place that on the floor. I will not dig any deeper. Since my own loss, I can see the same thing in others and know that he has been through the same as me at some point in his life. You can't hide it, grief that is. You may try to mask it but that just makes it show more. The more you cover up grief the more it shows until finally it comes pouring out of you in torrents of hate and despair and resentment. If there is one thing I have learnt over the last few months it is to wear your grief on your sleeve, it keeps the people away and the do-gooders firmly in their place.

~

The sun is high, the sky is blue, and there isn't a cloud to be seen. Time is moving all around us but we are somehow protected from it. Our little bit of England frozen in time. We are silent for a while, comfortable in that silence too, which generally I am not. Jacob hasn't finished his second beer but he places it down on the wooden table and the condensation runs down and pools there and he places his hands on his lap. They twitch every now and then, much like mine do when I am itching to draw, as if the picture is forcing its way out of my fingers.

"Are you hungry?"

He shakes his head, "No." and then asks me a question that makes my mind swim and my belly turn to butterflies, my eyes water, and my hands clench so tight I fear I am going to fracture every single bone in my fingers.

"What are your daughter's chances of survival?"

I grab the bottle, almost tipping it over. I don't drink from it; only hold it with the glass still resting on the wood. My hand is wet and getting cold from the condensation and even though I know exactly what it is he has just asked me I want to hear it again, "I'm sorry, what, what did you just say?"

Jacob turns his attention to the patio doors that lead through to the dining room and possibly further on, as his eyes seem to pierce the very fabric of existence.

He doesn't look at me when he speaks and there is a tone in his voice that tells me he regrets what he said, "I didn't mean to pry. I saw on the notice board in your kitchen a letter from the hospital. It was addressed to you but it concerned your daughter. Her heart is bad."

I shake my head, rub my wet hand across my face, grab hold of my chin, and squeeze it tightly. I can feel time is speeding up and the little bit of England that we were sitting in that wasn't affected by anything now seems to be in the centre of the universes firing line and we are slowly boiling in the heat of a thousand suns.

"I think I'd better leave." Jacob says and he stands and I remain seated and as he goes to walk by me I grab his arm and it is like taking hold of an iron bar and he stops but I know it's not because of my strength that he has stopped, it's because he wants to make it look like I have stopped him. I get the sense that if he really wanted to he could pick me up with one hand and break me like a matchstick, SNAP!

"No." I say, "Sit down."

He considers what I have demanded then sits down but he doesn't look at me and just stares at the beer bottle that glistens in the sunlight.

I feel sweaty under my arms and in my crotch and I start to analyse what he has just told me and fixate on one part.

"How did you see that letter? You were nowhere near it."

He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I think I should leave." And he goes to stand and I say, "No," like he is a dog and I his master and he sits back down again and I can see he is agitated because his fingers are twitching more and more and the whirring is loud and erratic and his tick-clunk, tick-clunk, tick-clunk is sounding unhealthy, like a heart that's beating out of time due some serious trauma.

"How the hell did you read that letter from so far off?"

He doesn't answer, I can feel myself getting frustrated and angry and the heat isn't helping and I too want to get out of here but I fear what he has said has made that impossible. I fear that what he has said may have shattered our fragile, newly born friendship. My tolerance is piss thin, not like it used to be. I can't stand ignorance anymore, it gets to me as if it never got to me before, that before is the before Emily died. She was my buffer, my softener, my voice box and my friend.

"Answer me, Jacob. How did you even see that letter? And what's with that bloody ticking noise all the fucking time?"

His fingers stop twitching, he looks at me, and his pupils dilate and then close in on themselves so that they are like pin pricks on a sheet of white paper.

"I shouldn't have come here," he says to no one even though he is looking at me, "though I suppose it doesn't matter now."

"What doesn't matter?"

This time when he speaks, he does look at me, I see a sad, troubled man looking back at me, and it is as if I am looking in the mirror. "The truth." Jacob leans in close as if he is just about to let me into a secret, "Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes." I mutter, and feel scared and vulnerable and outside of myself and I want to know it all right now but at the same time I don't and want him to leave so that I can go back to my miserable life and wait for the day to come when my daughter dies and I die with her.

"Then I shall tell you."

Jacob starts telling me the story of his life.

~

I sit there in silence and now finished the sky has turned dark and we have drank the fridge dry of beer and lemonade.

What he has told me means that the rest of my life will never be the same again.

He has given me something I never thought I was ever going to have ever again.

This one simple word tickles my mind, strangles my heart.

Hope.
Jacobs Story

Jacob says:

"I was born in 1880 and raised by my father because my mother died during childbirth. He wasn't the best of fathers. I wasn't abused but then again I wasn't treated with any sort of respect or paternal care. I guess I was a burden to him and so he treated me as such. We lived in a stone cottage with a leaky thatched roof and crumbling walls, which let the cold air in during the winter and held the heat in during the summer. It was on an estate owned by a Lord who had gone mad with loss and was hooked on drugs bought over by the immigrant workers he had working on his land. I never did meet that man, I saw him most days but he was always going in the other direction.

"My father looked after the hunting dogs, a job that would be passed down to me but I never wanted that for my future. My dad always looked so miserable, much like the dogs he tended too. I couldn't see the point of what he did, the dogs were never used for hunting and just barked and fought and made puppies until the day my father died of pneumonia brought on by the ravages of drink. Towards the end, he loved a drink, loved to punch too. That was the day that I walked out, the day that he died. I didn't bury him or tell anyone. I just left him sat upright in bed, his face pale and bloated from the sick he had choked on in his sleep. I don't dwell on that now but for a while, I thought about what people thought when they found him and I had gone and left him like that. What kind of son leaves his own father to rot in bed?

"A few days later, when I reached town, I spoke to a local recruiter and then joined the army. Waiting for the ride to take me to the training barracks I learned that the night I left home the old Lord came down, burnt the cottage to the ground, and killed all the dogs with an axe. When asked if it was because of my father's death he said he knew nothing about that and thought he had killed us both in the fire. That was in 1896.

"I was sixteen years old, still wet behind the ears though back then being sixteen pretty much made you a man, the only real job for me was in the Army. I was posted to the Royal Artillery in Larkhill. Times were different back then, and soon I found myself stationed with the canon crews and preparing for war. Our government at that time were worried about the French Revolution, about its impact on the common man, not over in France, but over here in England. Times were hard for the common man, but good for the rich, and that kind of disparity always causes friction.

"The way in which wars were being fought was changing and our forces were desperate for men. At that time, we had the strongest army and navy on the planet, mostly because we had the best, most up to date technologies. Most of those that we fought had sharp sticks and boiling cauldrons whilst we had guns, canons, and explosives and horses and trained men doing manoeuvres. The Great War seemed a long way off, that sort of war wasn't even considered possible though you could feel it brewing.

"The camp was teeming with new recruits because the army was hungry for men. Training was quick and pointless. We were given guns, but bullets were in short supply. Our uniforms were reissues of those worn by the recently killed. Mine had a bullet hole in the shoulder and one in the left chest pocket. I had to sow them up myself. There were many accidents in camp because most of the time us new recruits didn't know what we were doing. Instructions were given sometimes third or fourth hand and that always causes trouble.

"I made friends with five men. Two of them died within the first month, their bodies were burnt, and their ashes scattered on the football pitch because they had no families and we had no graveyard.

"I had been in Larkhill for only three months when I died.

~

"From what I read there was a fault in the machining of the canon I was working on that caused the explosion that killed me. It doesn't really matter what caused it, all I know is that I took the brunt of the explosion and as far as the rest of the world was concerned; I was dead. There was no funeral. I have no grave. It was as if I had never existed.

"There is a nothing in my life. From the June of 1896 to around the August of 1897, there is a wall in my brain that no amount of hammering can destroy. It's there because my body wants to forget what it went through during those twelve months I spent underground.

"My body was handed over to a doctor under the false direction that he was interested in studying blast patterns and the impact they have on the human body. It was a different time, no questions were asked and no papers were signed. What was left of me was simply handed over to him and I was placed on a cold metal table; a little brown tag hanging on my big toe. But that tag was blank. I had become a no one, a nothing, not even a number anymore.

"I suppose I should tell you about the doctor. I guess you could say he was my father. He was a young man, twenty-two when I first met him. Born into money and into a family that prided themselves on their medical heritage. But he was different. His name was Albert Brink, but I got the impression that that was not his real name. Albert was a very clever doctor, but that was not his true passion. His true passion was in machines. He was fascinated by the way in which machinery worked from the biggest steam powered engine down to the smallest clockwork windings in the finest pocket watch. He had been working in that underground surgery near Larkhill for two years, which was still army property and government controlled, and he hated it. The surgery had one nurse and ten patients all of whom were fit and healthy and would be because they were government experiments; designed not to fall ill or have accidents, I guess they were a sort of super soldier that ended up failing in the end. When I asked what sort of experiments they were he always shook his head and told me that he had no idea what they were being experimented on or for because he was never told and in the army what you aren't told you don't need to know. All he had to do was monitor their health and make them better if they ever fell ill, which they never did. That futile work reminded me of what my father did.

"I don't know how to explain what happened to me in that year. I suppose quite simply, that I was experimented on. But by Albert, not the government. The government didn't know about me or what he was doing to me. You see his fascination for the way in which things worked pushed him to the only logical out pouring such a love can yield; he built things. Little metal trinkets with tiny motors and clockwork hearts. As he got better, they got bigger, more complex, and now instead of just one, they had two or even three motors that ran from wind-up motions. I can see them all now; placed neatly in rows on his shelves and on the floor under his great wooden desk. When I took them out into the light of day, they shone like pearls and seemed to run a little faster, a little smoother even, and for much longer. Much like me, they enjoy the sun. I can't explain that.

"So there I was, a broken man, a dead man. My right leg had been blown off just below the hip. At the end of my left leg, my foot hung on with grim determination and would have to be removed. Both my arms were missing and my right shoulder was destroyed. My face was intact, except for my eyes, they had been burnt dry and I had no hair. As bad as all that was I had two major injuries that caused him the greatest of troubles. The first was that my heart had been torn apart and was useless. The second was that half of my brain was missing, skewered by shrapnel.

"To cut a long story short, James, he rebuilt me. Not like how Doctor Frankenstein built his monster. It was different. More refined. He worked mostly in brass and stainless steel that he machined himself. What he did was not of its time and in a way, it is not of this time. He replaced missing bone with bars, fingers with thin rods and muscle with pistons and gears. My heart is a complex mechanical machine. It is a marvel as to what man can do. I often think to myself that in one hand, man can create such wonders as my metal heart but in the other hand, it can create the hydrogen bomb. Two creations so different but yet so powerful.

"But all that he accomplished was nothing compared to the mountain he had to climb when it came to my brain. Without that, I was just a corpse with metal arms and legs. He never shared how he did it for he feared that his secrets would help create monsters. He wanted to save people, help people, not destroy them. Most of all he wanted to better the world in which we lived. All I know about how it was that I came to breathe again is simply that I did and that my heart pumps and my brain commands and my organs, some of meat others of metal, perform, as they should. I am alive.

"I quickly learned all the things I had forgotten or that my body had never performed because it was mostly new. I had to learn to control my strength because I stronger than I had been. In those early days, I had to wind myself up using three keys that were attached to the back of my head, my chest and my right thigh. Every day I would have to wind myself up. At first it was novel, fun in an odd way, but eventually it became tedious. Overtime I have upgraded those parts and now I don't need to twist those damned keys anymore. However, I do have to wear this cap, which I shall explain more of later, if you still want to hear.

"Albert was like a father to me during that first year. He was concerned about my mental and physical wellbeing; after all, I had been clinically dead and was now an automaton. That kind of thing doesn't happen every day to a fellow.

"Albert thought that when I was reborn I would still have the same feelings I used to have when I was a man and that my mind would work much like it did before. But it did not. As you know Simon, a toaster cannot feel. A coffee machine knows how to brew your morning drink but it cannot love you. Therefore, I had no problems with what happened to me and still don't. My mind has grown since those days. I have upgraded myself into what you see now, however back then I was running on simple code and fragile gears. I felt very little, much like a child with autism I had no understanding of what others felt and so I did not care what I said or did or what they said or did.

I couldn't care.

Albert did not like that aspect of his creation but we were already at the peak of what technology could offer and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe if we had more time together things would have been different.

"Those first two years of my new life were the greatest days of my life, but, as the saying goes, 'all good things must come to an end' and they most certainly did for me.

The government finally caught up with us.

~

"It was the nurse that worked in the surgery. She informed the General of the base that Albert was stationed at of what was going on in the underground surgery she administered. He knew of the other experiments but not of me. They came and took me from Albert and I remember seeing him struggle in the soldier's arms as they restrained him. There was such a fear in his eyes, not sadness as I would have expected and he struggled so much I feared they would kill him.

As they led me away, he begged them not to. He begged me to fight, to run, but I did not because I had no real understanding of what was happening to me. I felt no fear, no sadness toward my creator, or even hate toward the man that was taking me. I simply went with the General who looked at me like a boy at Christmas would look upon his new toys and when he smiled I smiled because at that stage Albert was teaching me how to mimic others so that one day I could blend in to the real world and when Albert saw this his head dropped and he cried and then I was out into the sunshine and taken away from what I considered to be my home and into a world so far removed from anything that I could have dreamt.

"That was the last time I saw Albert for a long time. It was forty-eight years later when Albert found me in a concrete coffin.

"But I digress.

"When the clock clicked to midnight and England entered the twentieth century I had been a machine for three years. My body, however, hadn't aged a single day. When I was first created, Albert taught me how to live. In the hands of the General, I was taught how to kill. I was the ultimate weapon. I felt nothing. I did as I was told, as I knew no different. I had no reasoning, just base code that I followed orders without question. The perfect soldier. I was kept in a secure location somewhere in Wales and to this day I don't know where that place is and I have given up searching for it. Some things aren't meant to be found. I hope the earth has swallowed it up.

"I can't say that those days were dark or gloomy, I had no feelings and still don't. The only way I can help you understand what went on is by saying that what I did is much like you making a cup of coffee in the morning. You do it almost sub-consciously. You wake, you do, and all without thought. I woke, I killed and moved on.

"The years rolled on. The world grew older but I did not. In Europe, a war was brewing. A Great War, the likes of which we had never seen before. I was sent across to mainland Europe then. I had targets, men and machine, factory and city. I did what I was ordered to do, I answered to no one but the General who sat in his warm office hundreds of miles away. I have read books written by those that served during those times. Their tales are of muddy trenches and death, blood and pain, hurt and loss, scenes of utter chaos and some of utter serenity when the bombs stopped dropping for a few minutes and you could hear the birds singing.

Tragedy on a grand scale that most cannot understand. One soldier, a man I saved the life of in Italy and who called me a friend but I didn't as I didn't think I needed friends or understood what they were, called us all 'Hero Killers' in his diary and that has stuck with me because he was right. We were heroes and we were killers, each and every last one of us. He died like most of the others did and will be remembered until no one knows to forget. I miss him. At least I think I do, I'm not sure

"And then on the 11th November, 1918, it was over. But not for me. There were pockets of resistance in the German forces. Men seeking fortunes and power in the smoking corpses of cities. I was tasked with cleaning up and so for me the Great War didn't finish until the summer of 1920. I returned to England neither without a hero's welcome nor to great fanfare. Like everything else, it meant very little to me because to me there was nothing to care about. I was simply cleaned, upgraded to lighter materials and then put back to work.

"The General was dead. He died of a heart attack brought on by long nights, thick cigars, heavy wine and carefree women. He left another man in charge; a General Lowell. Though I knew it then but did not care, I now come to realise that General Lowell was a bad man. A cruel man, who held a grudge with everyone and everything. He hadn't earned his stripes; they were given to him because he knew things only those in secret offices should know and he used all those secret things to bribe his way to the top. The time between the Great War and the outbreak of the Second World War was an uncertain time for everyone, but not for me, not for the General either, he used me for not only the gains of the country but for himself too.

"Mainland Europe, in the days before my death, seemed such a faraway place. Exotic almost. But by what would have been my fifty-fifth birthday I had travelled the world and Europe was nothing to me but a stopgap to even more exotic places like India, Australia, Thailand and Japan. I watched travellers with excited faces pouring over the wonders of the world that back then were new, untouched, and unseen but to me were nothing but structures in the way of my targets. I have seen the Sphinx at sunset, Victoria Falls in full rage, the savage blue winters of Russia and I have hung from scaffolding during the construction of the Empire State building. I witnessed the first atomic bomb test and the creation of the jet engine. I have seen statues of men rise and fall and cities crumble beneath the fists of tyrannical giants. But none of it mattered to me. Now it matters because the world has changed and so have I and what I have seen cannot be re-seen. What I have lost cannot be found and put back where it was and be okay again. No glue can stick all of that back together. I wish I could share all those things I saw, my memories of when the world seemed like it was new and everything was a discovery. There is nothing truly new anymore. Everything is a copy, a fake, but I saw it all but couldn't share those memories or give them justice.

"But I digress and I can see you have questions but please just a little longer because I have never told this story and now that I am I need to finish.

"I had contacts in every corner of the world and they would pass on the messages from the General and then mine to him. Time moved on. Days to weeks, weeks to months and months to years. I sent word of a man that was coming to power and wrote down what he said and posted it back to the General. I saw that man speak once. I was in a crowd of thousands and like them, I was watching just one little man on a plinth who seemed to ooze power and knowledge and command and control. They loved him, adored him unquestioningly, as a child loves their parents, which to those that did not ever meet him find hard to believe considering what he commanded those under him to do. To this day, I haven't seen a country so devoted to one man, one ideal, one lunatic.

"So the Second World War kicked off and I went from place to place doing what I was ordered to do. I spent most of my time in Germany itself. Behind the lines, in the shadows, and I did my work either by the light of the moon or by the flickering light of a match. All that man had come to be in the years between the wars was washed away in a sea of blood and tears.

"One day before the D-Day landings I found myself stood near the spot where the man who called me friend had died during the Great War. It was a sad place to stand for it was nothing but mud and rotten trees and wandering weeds. There was nothing there to say that many men had died there, no tomb or epitaph. I say I was sad because that was what I felt and to this day, I don't know how that came to be because I don't feel anything. But as real as I am here and you are there and I have a metal brain with a computer in it that works out what I do and what I know with code and numbers, I did feel sad because he had been my friend and now he was dead and I was stood there and it was if he had never lived and I was the only one that had known him and I was the only one to have heard what he called the men that fought back then and they were like the men that fought now: Hero Killers.

"That day, the day before another swathe of men would die fighting for something that doesn't exist because we are never free though we like to think we are, I decided I didn't want to fight anymore. I had orders; they were to assist those running up the beaches storming the concrete fortresses that had enough guns in them to bring a nation to its knees. But I didn't want to do that and I don't know why."

I interrupt. "You were evolving."

"I suppose. Mankind always finds a way to live. I once saw a man eat his dead son just to survive a famine. I have seen a town kill its second born sons or first-born daughters because they could only afford to raise one child and that child had to be a boy because the taxes had become intolerable. So I guess the part of me that was still a man wanted to live. Wanted to be free.

"So I headed back to England that day, heading north whilst the soldiers I was ordered to help were headed south and toward their deaths.

"How many of those men could I have saved do you think? One? Fifty? A thousand? How many sons or husbands could have lived if I hadn't decided to flee because I was bored of the killing? Maybe I would have died then and been freed of that so called life. Because I can die, James. I may be made of gears, pistons, wire, tubing, valves, and pumps that seem never to age, but they do age, and by that time, I wasn't running quite right. I had developed a limp, my arms didn't move smoothly and my thoughts were slower. I had holes in my skin; parts of it were ripped right through to the bone or metal plates that held it all together. I was in my sixties but my flesh was still that of a twenty year old thanks to a liquid medicine I had to drink each day but even that liquid wasn't doing what it was supposed to do anymore and so because of that I was falling apart.

"When I arrived back in Britain the General was furious. D-Day had been a success, if you could call the slaughter of tens of thousands of men a success, but none the less the war was being won instead of lost and soon it would be won for good and the men could come home and England could rebuild.

"But there was no-one who could rebuild me except for myself but I didn't want to. The General had grown tired of my belly aching and so one day I was lead from that place in Wales and taken into a forest and wrapped in asbestos cloth and thrown into a hole. As I closed my eyes for what I thought was the last time I was covered in hot concrete and left to die, to rot.

"But I didn't die. I just slept until the rains came and the earth moved and the concrete tomb I was in cracked and someone found me who had been looking for me and when the concrete was removed and the asbestos cloth carefully unfolded from my decaying skin I looked at the man who took me from a place I thought was death and I called that man 'father' and he wept and it hurts me to think that even though I wanted to cry I could not because he hadn't built me to do that.

"Albert saved me for a second time that day. At first, I did not speak and laid there whilst he went about repairing me. There is another nothing between 1946 and 1948 when my mind went silent. I was dead again, during that time but there was no afterlife. I closed my eyes and I heard a wet twisting sound as the plate in my head was removed and then everything went black for what felt like just a second but when I opened my eyes again I was laying in the garden of the house where I live now and Albert was stood over me and smiling. And I returned that smile, not because I was programmed too, not because I was mimicking him either. I returned that smile because I was pleased to see the man I now call my father. Later I learned that that wasn't a real feeling. I don't have feelings. Just memories of them.

"I was like new again. Refurbished and working well and Albert fussed about me as if I was his baby and he my mother. Nothing was too much for him even though his own health was failing. He tried to hide it, waving off the deep-rooted cough as if it was nothing but a winter's sniffle. But it wasn't nothing and soon, as his health deteriorated, I took care of him as if I were a son caring for his father in his time of need.

"He died in the winter of 1960. I was not aware of any family for he never spoke of one or sought to find comfort in one. He received no mail but did read the paper, which was delivered each day. Albert had no friends except me. He talked to others only when he needed to. I suppose he had a nothing in his life and that nothing was a life. In the evenings, he would sit alone in the front room and stare vacantly into the corner. I don't know what he was thinking, I never asked. I have come to believe that he was scared of losing me again, that he feared the government would come looking for me and he wouldn't have the strength to hold them back and as much as I said I wouldn't go with them this time, that I have changed, he knew that was a lie because behind my right eye he could see the reason engine he had built reverse its clockwise spin and turn against the current and that meant I was lying. It was that simple.

"I buried him deep in the ground in a forest behind the hill. He is next to a tall tree and its leaves shade him during the hot days and protect him from heavy rains during the winter. I chose that place because he had a painting over the fireplace in the dining room of a similar tree, which had a bare breasted woman swaying on a swing, which hung down from a very un-natural looking branch. That painting is there still; perhaps you will see it one day.

"Anyway, since then I have not enjoyed the winter. I get cold because of the metal in me and my joints ache and I have to oil myself and warm myself by the fire. Even in the summer, I feel cold. I heard a song one day and it had some lyrics that made me think that others may have the same problem as me. It's an odd song because it only has this one line it: 'and it's cold in July'. I don't fully understand music, but understand the notion. As much as I like that song it puzzles me that it only has one line. I can't imagine a poem ever having just one line. Maybe that is the sort of thing Albert – Father – was waiting for me to say when he sat there in the soft glow of his table lamp. I'll never know.

"And that's my life. Give or take. I have continued to fix myself, upgrade to quicker, lighter, more durable parts. Even my skin can be renewed thanks to the recent advances. Its hard work and I always have something to do, something to build. I go for walks in the mornings and then late at night because I like the sun but most of all I like the moon. I spent so much time under it when I was in the wars I have learned to enjoy its company. I do not get mail. You are the first person I have said more than twenty words to in years. Much like Albert, I have a tension inside of me, not a fear, because I can't be afraid. I was tense because I too had concerns over the government and what they would do to me if they found me.

"I have to be careful, James.

"Now I know you heard me. Not many do and I don't know why that it is. Perhaps they don't listen. People don't listen any more, they look, they nod, they answer, but they don't listen or understand. If they do hear me then I will take it upon myself never to see that person again. That was until yesterday, when I met you. You remind me of the man that called me friend when the world was grey and there was death all around me. You don't look the same. He had fallen down the ugly tree and hit every branch on his way but you are a good-looking guy. The ladies always turn when you walk by. For some reason I trust you and I don't want to lose this opportunity to have a friend."
Wanting To Die

Jacob is looking at the decking that needs a coat of paint. He spoke to me with such honesty that it is hard not to feel sorry for him. I can't imagine what he has seen and done and what his body has been through and I don't really need to because he doesn't want my sympathy, he doesn't want me doting over him like a concerned mother.

I could listen to him talk for hours on end; his voice is so plain, so balanced, out of another time where text messaging and emails had not been invented. And that's what he is, a man out of time, running parallel with us but not able to step across and join us. He's not lost because no one is looking for him.

I don't really know what to say. There are a million and one questions to ask but none of them seem the right question. I have met a few veterans and know that they don't like to talk of the wars they fought in and I learnt quickly that if they want to talk about what they went through then they would do it in their own time.

My bottle of beer is empty. I reach down and grab another one but don't offer Jacob one as his is still full and he is cradling it into his stomach with both hands. Then it hits me. He may not know it but I think I do the real reason why he is confiding in me.

"You want to die, don't you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. You seem fed up. Like you've had enough and it's time to go."

"So you believe me then?"

I nod and drink some beer and when I finish I stand and stretch my back and look at my watch and see the time.

Jacob looks up at me but doesn't do anything likewise. I suppose he doesn't need to stretch and he adjusts his flat cap by holding the back and twitching the front so that it covers his forehead and more importantly covers the metal screw-top that protects his brain.

"I don't want to die. Not yet anyway. There are things I still need to do. But once they are done, perhaps then I would like to close my eyes for the last time and perhaps wake up in another place where I'm not made of metal and fake flesh and composite organs and computer chips and perpetual winding motions that make a sound that makes me stand out in a crowd." He says this to me but there is no feeling to those words. They are just words spoken as if by a robot with a human voice. He is life-imitating life and I am sure that I am the same. I sit back down and he sips at his beer and he looks at me with those eyes that aren't eyes and I can see that now because the light isn't shining directly into them anymore. I can see his reasoning machine spinning behind his eyes and I am captured within its spin. Jacob says:

"You can see it, can't you?"

I nod and put my fidgeting hands on the table and try to look away but can't and I am starting to sweat and my garden has become a sun trap and soon it will be time to escape the blazing heat and take refuge in the cool surroundings of my quiet house.

"Will you tell anyone about me?"

He sounded pitiful even though his voice was a constant. Like a child, that has been caught stealing, afraid that the big man might tell his father. He is just staring at me and I can hear his noise ticking and clunking in the background but the whirring of his mind has eased, or maybe it hasn't, maybe I am getting used to it and it is the same level it has always been. I am amazed at what he has told me and am still trying to digest it but chunks of his story are stuck in my throat and won't go down.

What were the last things his victims heard before they died? I looked down to his hands and they looked like my hands, they didn't seem to be any different to mine. But they were. His were made of metal and gears and stuff I don't understand whilst mine are made of flesh and bone and all things vulnerable, all things real.

In the silence of my thoughts, I can see he is becoming agitated and he wants to leave and he wants an answer and it is filling him with tension and even though he thinks, he doesn't show it I can see that he does. I can see his feelings. I can sense his tension like a rope tightening around the neck of a criminal as he hangs from a beam.

"I won't tell anyone." I mean it though I only spoke in a whisper and even I struggled to hear what I said. Then I can see Poppy, laying in her bed, begging for just one more story Daddy, just one more...pleeeeease! and so I say okay, just one more and she says she promises that it will only be one more and she holds out her little finger and wiggles it and I wrap my little finger around hers and the bond is made; the immovable, indestructible, unbreakable bond of the Pinky Promise.

And because of that thought I lean forward and offer Jacob my little finger, even give it a little wiggle and he looks at it and then to me and then back to the finger so I wiggle it some more and then he turns to me and I can hear that machine of his going mental and Jacobs eyes are ticking away and I instantly regret what I did. I keep my hand there with my pinky outstretched.

"I don't understand."

I laugh and remove the offer of the unbreakable bond. "Do you know what, Jacob; neither do I, but trust me when I say that what you have told me will never leave my lips."

We both take a drink and sit in relative silence with only the sounds of the city drifting over my pitiful garden and Jacobs machine is working away which is a subtle reminder that time moves on no matter what we try and do to stop it.

~

I offer Jacob another beer but he says no and he stands and looks to the sky and then scans the garden that surrounds us.

"This will never do." Jacob wipes his hands on his jeans that now I think don't suit him and he turns to me and adjusts his cap by holding the back down and twitching the front so that it is just above his eyes. I wonder how many times he has done that.

"What wont?"

"This garden of yours. Would you like some help in putting it right?"

I can see a happy little face smiling back at me when she comes home and sees the new garden Daddy and his friend has made for her. All at once, I forget that she is dying and will be dead when the flowers die and I am left with wet mud and brown petals sticking to my shoes. But by thinking of it, I remember everything but it doesn't stop me from wanting to do it.

"Yes." My chest fills with air and I smile and he smiles back and I am unsure what to think of that smile because it's not real. But mankind is a simple beast and we find comfort in what we know and have become accustomed to so I accept that smile with outstretched arms.

"Poppy will love it. Will there be roses?"

"Of all colours."

I think of what the garden may look like. I don't know what he is thinking. Possibly the same as me, I won't enquire.

~

I escort him through the house and watch as he picks up his tools with an ease I know I could never have. There is a level of comfort between us that I have only ever felt with my sister. A comfort that needs no words to ripple its flat, smooth surface.

I say goodbye and he returns the gesture and the gate swings open and shut without one single squeak. Jacob stops on the other side of the gate with his back to me and I look at his flat cap and consider what might be under there. He stands like that for some time and I know why but he is too far away for me to hear his machines working away like tiny mice. The street is wet this afternoon, not with rain but with heat and my t-shirt is clinging to me and when Jacob finally turns and speaks even his voice sounds sodden:

"Do you believe in God?"

"Nope."

Jacob nods and stares at me. "Nor do I. What do you believe in?"

"I don't know. The truth...facts I suppose. Why?"

"I have seen things that may be proof that both God and science can exist together. Though I am a piece of evidence that works against Gods work." Jacob looks at the gate and then back to me. "My friend, the one that died in the Great War, he was called James too. I thought you might like to know that." He turns and heads off home without wanting to hear what I have to say which is rude but then that's a good thing because I have nothing to say except ,"I need a beer."

And a passing boy with freckles and ginger hair, riding on a pushbike that didn't have playing cards in the spokes because the world has moved on since that was cool, cycles by and looks briefly at me because I am stood here talking to no one but the hot, wet air.

I close the front door and then the inside door and shut the world out. I stay in the hallway looking straight ahead at the stairs and I would like someone to talk to. But there isn't anyone. Not anymore, so I am resigned to my own sulking self.

"Get. A. Fucking. Grip." I squeeze the tense flesh of my thighs through my shorts and it hurts but I don't care because pain is a companion of sorts. I sit on the stairs and go back over what Jacob told me and I can't sit still on the rough carpet so I get up and grab a beer from the fridge and go into the front room and sit down on the sofa.

The house feels hard, it's so quiet I can hear my heart beating, a heart made of meat not metal. The little bubbles pop in the bottle of beer and a part of me wants to tip all the liquid over the carpet and smash the bottle against the wall because I am angry and frustrated that I can't focus on anything but her and that I have nothing to look forward to anymore and have to physically stop myself from fulfilling such a dumb act and I am feeling all this pent up anger and rage and tension because all I want is someone to talk to, someone to help me make something of the rest of my life and to take away the thoughts I have. It seems whenever I am alone my default setting in self-loathing and it is pathetic beyond all measure.

~

There is a man who lives around the corner that is made of metal. A Clockwork Man who has lived for over a hundred years and doesn't look a day over thirty. I have so many questions building up inside of me that I can't figure out what they all are as all of them blend into one giant question that I can't communicate or swallow down.

He called me his friend. From what he has told me I am the third one. Which troubles me, as I'm not a good friend to have; I don't keep in contact or write birthday cards. I'm not there when they need help moving or when they seek advice. What kind of advice can I give? My only job has been a freelance artist and I was shit at that. This house was bought with money left by the dead. Emily earned enough for me to stay at home and work from here and even with her gone, I am a kept man. Still they come to me for help in getting the right mortgage or loan, guidance on what to do in their relationships or how to best fix up their homes. The truth be told I didn't care then and even though they all came to the funeral and will do so again when I have to carry another, much smaller coffin into that fucking church, I won't care when they come looking for it again. They will be there when I am fallen onto my knees crying and will help me up and then later when I am doing the same because I have drunk too much they will all fuss over me and make sure I am okay but still I won't care when they come to me seeking support. Will it be the same for Jacob? Will I use him as I have used the others?

~

I grab another beer and it's only three in the afternoon and I can feel myself getting drunk. Walking back into the front room and grabbing the remote I tell myself that it's all for Poppy.

And that is the truth of it. The real truth. My life ceased to be when she came along. All that I had was given up for her and it matters to me not a fucking jot who is left behind. That's what it is all about, isn't it? I try to think of the word I want to use but I can't and so devotion will have to do but that word falls far too short of what I want and feel and I suppose that is because of the beer or perhaps there is no word that describes the love we have for our children.

Even though I have just met a man that has told me things I thought I would never hear and offered me his friendship I am still sat in my quiet house not doing sod all to put myself back on track. I have accepted that Poppy will die and maybe that's the problem. I have given up on her like I have given up on my friends, just given up.

"I can't give up on her." but the words are swallowed up in my throat and tears flow from my eyes and it stings but I don't wipe them away and I go to take another swig of beer that has started to taste sour but instead I actually do pour it onto the beige carpet and when the bottle is empty and the carpet is dark and wet I launch the bottle across the room and it shatters against the wall and the sound of it rings in my ears and screams around the house like a strangled cat. I am pleased with myself for doing it. I have done this, I have brought myself down to this level and it is up to me to bring myself out of it.

My breathing is hard and fast like it was on the day when I ran to the hospital to watch the birth of my daughter. I get up and walk through the wet patch of beer and across the broken glass and it creaks and cracks and breaks under the weight of me and my trainers' rubber sole. I open the fridge, grab another beer and then put it back. I slam the fridge door shut and open the small cupboard under the sink that everyone has in their kitchen. Instead of holding a beer I go back into the front room with the small dustpan and brush in my hands and clean up the glass and when that is done I soak up the stain with an old towel and then hoover the carpet just to make sure.

When all that is done, I too feel done, so I take a nap.

~

When I wake up it is almost dark and the front room is bathed in a deep orange glow and I think of dragons that come out at this time of the day and get scared but then remember that that only happens in movies or in those fantasy novels.

Then I do get scared because there are noises coming from my garden. I grab hold of the remote control for the television and then drop it on the floor because that was not going to do me any good. My left foot is in the wet patch I made with the beer and I tip toe out of the room and into the hallway. Everything in the house seems to be creaking as I go slowly down the hallway and peer into the kitchen. My shadow casts everything ahead of me in grey and the orange glow that I had awoken to is now fading and the house is becoming darker and I shiver, not because it is cold, but because I am nervous.

There is more noise from the garden, shuffling from near the back door where there is a shed and some tools like a shovel, a set of shears and a trowel that hasn't seen dirt in all of its life. All I have to do is poke my head around the corner and look into the dining room and I will see what is going on out there. But I don't want too as they will see me and know that I have seen them and so will want to kill me. I should call the police but I don't know where my phone is. I haven't used it all day and can't remember where I left it. Whoever it is that is outside has now gone quiet and I stand alert and poised waiting for the sound of shattering glass as they come smashing through the patio doors.

But nothing comes.

A knock at the front door makes me turn sharply and it hurts my neck but I don't move any further or scream because it feels as if my throat has swollen up. I can see a shadow in the forecourt. It is out there and I am in here and behind me there may be someone else. The shadow in the forecourt knocks the door again and its thuds echo through the house.

"Hang on!" Comes out of my mouth but I don't remember telling my brain to say that. Even though I am looking at the front door through the glass of the porch door, my eyes feel like they are darting all over the place. I haven't breathed in a while so I inhale deeply and hold it there and come over a bit dizzy. I look into the dining room and in a flash, I see that the garden is empty but there are things out there that were not there before but my movement is so quick I don't get to fully understand what those new things are.

"Coming." And I head down the hallway, my one wet foot leaving smears on the laminate flooring me and Emily laid before we knew she was going to die. I suppose I will never do that kind of thing ever again.

The shadow is still there as I open the first door.

The owner of the shadow moves when I open the door and in the dying light of day I look past Jacob who is standing there with his flat cap on and with both hands in his jean pockets - which still don't suit him - and I glance over to the other houses because I think that others may be watching. But no one is watching, why would they?

"Sorry to trouble you," He says, but I ignore that.

"Was that you in my garden?"

"Yes."

"Why?" and I sound snappy but I don't mean too but then it doesn't matter because Jacob isn't a normal man. He is a machine and I can hear that tick-clunk noise coming from him in rhythmic pulses that I feel will slowly drive me insane.

"I thought I would bring some bits over for your garden. I knocked on the back door but you didn't answer so I just carried on because I thought you may have gone out."

"I didn't go out. I was asleep on the sofa."

"Oh." Jacob takes his hands from his pockets and adjusts his flat cap so that the back of his head is covered.

"How did you get that stuff over the walls?"

Jacob shrugs his shoulders and I picture him carrying the heavy toolboxes as if they are empty cardboard boxes. He doesn't answer because he sees my realisation.

"What do you want, Jacob?"

"Are you busy tomorrow morning?"

"No." But I wished I were.

"Good. Then I shall be around at ten to make a start on the garden."

"Okay. But no more of this."

"Noted."

Jacob goes to turn and go home but I stop him and tell him to wait and go into the house, into the kitchen, and take out a white business card from my wallet.

"Take this and next time, just call me."

Jacob takes the card but doesn't look at it just holds onto it with the tips of his fingers in both hands as if it is some ancient relic from a long dead empire. And then he does turn and go and I don't stop him from going even though it would be nice to have someone to talk to tonight because the state I was in before I fell asleep is still with me. I close the front door and lock it. Closing the porch door I hear my belly rumble and it occurs me that I am starving so I call the local kebab house and order two large ones and a bottle of cola. I haven't had a kebab in a long time and I hope it tastes as good as I remember.

They take the allotted thirty minutes to arrive and I watch a film that I have seen many times before as I don't want to see anything new because I don't think my brain could take any more new information. Moreover, we watched new movies together, Emily and me. That was our Saturday night. Popcorn and a movie snuggled on the sofa. Never again will that happen, something else that has been swallowed up by the void.

When I have finished the greasy meal, I take the plate and leave it in the kitchen with the kebab wrappings strewn on the worktop and know that they will stink in the morning and I shall have trouble shifting that smell. Emily hated that stink, but she isn't here anymore and so can't moan about it and thinking of her like that makes me feel a little sick but it is just a whisper of a feeling of sickness and so I leave the mess on the side and go back in and watch the rest of the film and fall asleep on the sofa because Emily isn't here and her disapprovals don't count anymore.
Roses

It's early in the morning when I wake up. I have slept all night on the sofa.

My back aches. I don't care; it was my own choice to sleep on the sofa so it's my own fault. I don't move for nearly an hour. Just lay there on the sofa with my head on two cushions and my legs stretched out, the cream blanket that was Emily's favourite wrapped around me and I imagine that it is here wrapped around me, I can't stop myself. My hands are below the blanket and tucked into my boxer shorts. I hold my penis, not to arouse myself, but because I don't have a hand to hold or no one to cuddle.

I wish I had pulled the curtains closed last night as the room is bright and that is what woke me. I can hear the birds singing from their rooftop hideaways. I wonder why they roost on our houses when there are trees not half a mile up the road. I suppose it's the same reason why not all birds follow the summer sun.

There is a little twang from the pipes that run under the floorboards and I know it is seven because that is the sound of the boiler kicking in to pre-heat the hot water. I should adjust that because I don't need it to come on as often as it does because there are only two of us now and Poppy and me don't have the same bathroom needs as Emily had.

Jacob will be here in three hours so I get up and take a shower and wash myself thoroughly, not with the soap that Emily used to use, but with my own soap and that's the first time I have done that since the day she died and it doesn't hurt me - like it didn't hurt me to leave the stinking kebab wrappings out on the kitchen side all night - as I thought it would. I still love her, Christ I love her with all my heart and I don't know if that will ever go away, but Karen is right, I do have to move on. I have to get on with it. Whatever it is.

However, moving on is not that simple. I dry then walk into Poppy's bedroom but stop at the threshold and look around the pink room and see a world that will never grow up and one that will have to be put away or destroyed. To destroy it seems so final but one day that will have to be the case, otherwise what's left will destroy me.

Perhaps Jacob will help me when the time comes.

~

Now dressed, I sit in the kitchen and wait. I've already sent a text to Karen and she had responded and everything is okay with her and Poppy and she will call later. I force some cereal down my throat then put the bowl into the dishwasher as well as the plate from lasts night kebab. I put the rubbish out then light a scented candle in the hallway and one in the kitchen because the house really does stink of day old kebab meat.

At ten, there is a knock at the door and that makes me happy and takes away the uncomfortable jitters I had all morning.

~

The work is hard for me, easy for him. I am unfit. He is outrageously strong whilst I am clumsy and take two or three goes to do something he can accomplish in one. Whilst I work, I moan and groan and hold my back and rest the shovel against my hip and look to the sky wearily. Jacob, on the other hand, doesn't stretch his back out or moan or groan. He works and works and his little noises; tick-clunk, tick-clunk, tick-clunk, follow him around and the whirring of his gears and swooshing of his pistons accompany him like an orchestra.

We mostly work in silence. There is one goal here and we both know what that is. Garden sacks are filled with weeds and old rotten dirt and they are heavy to me and I struggle carrying one out to the front of the house whilst Jacob carries two but I am sure he could take three or four but doesn't because he isn't cocky. When we do talk, I stop working but he carries on working.

Now he stops turning over the dirt with the fork he carried with him over the fence last night when I thought I was being burgled and looks at me and says:

"You're a brave man."

And I have never been called brave. Perhaps in childhood, maybe, but not in adulthood.

So I just simply say thank you and that seems enough for him but it isn't for me so I say:

"But surely I should be the one saying that to you. After all, you did for this country. And for me the other night. You are the brave one here, Jacob, not me."

He shook his head and mimicked me by placing his shovel against his hip. Before he spoke, Jacob fiddled with his flat cap, "It's not the same. I had no choice back then and in a way I have no choice now." Jacob tapped his knuckles against the side of his head, "Hardwired to help. Coded to follow orders no matter what they lead to. It's no Asimov's laws up there but nonetheless, what I do is simply an outpouring of the code that has been written into me."

"I don't believe that." But I get the impression that he doesn't understand what I mean so he just goes back to work. As he turns his head I am sure his mouth was open as if he were about to say something, but changed his mind.

I think he needs as much help as I do. I don't know what to say and so I don't say anything and just get back to work.

~

I stop and have a couple of slices of peanut butter on toast and some cola but Jacob just keeps on going. It's not as hot today as it has been recently and there are large white puffy clouds in the sky which block the sun for twenty minutes at a time but still I am sweating like a pig. Jacob isn't.

I look at my watch and it is just after two and I look at all we have accomplished in that time and I can't believe it. There is still much more to do so I get back to it.

A bit later on when my back is stiff and my arms lobster red with sunburn because I am too stubborn to put on sun-cream I stop and watch him plant the roses into the fresh earth and say:

"Do you miss them? James and Albert that is."

"I don't know. It's hard to say."

"Hard to say. You either do or you don't."

Jacob doesn't sigh but if he had the ability, too I'm sure he would have. He stops planting but doesn't look at me; instead, as he talks, he admires the roses that are surrounding him:

"Not as simple as that, not for me anyway. It is hard to judge if they were my friends because I have not the technical capacity to have such things. What you class as feelings are just memories of feelings coming back to me so that my future thoughts can be analysed and shown in a way my human mind can understand. Am I sad that they are dead; yes, but I am sad because my mother died when I was young and so my mind links the two things together. So were they my friends, are you my friend? I don't know. I am not programmed to have friends, just people who assist me in my goals. To have a friend is to have an emotion toward that person and as I am incapable of creating my own feelings and rely on what it was I felt before I became what I am today, surely that means I cannot have a friend? So I have to answer no to your question. I knew them and they were there. When they were not there anymore I carried on."

I exhale through tight lips and run my muddy hands through my hair, which is wet with sweat.

"That is a lot to take in. I can see in you something you cannot see. You have made yourself blind to it. As if I have blinded myself in the grief of losing a child that is still alive, you are so sure of what's up in that amazing brain of yours that you can see no other way of thinking. When that soldier died I think it awakened something in you that had been dormant for many years."

"Perhaps."

Jacob goes back to work and his hands that are made of fake skin and metal are so delicate on the flowers that he holds that I am even surer that he has emotions and just doesn't know it.

~

At four, when the clouds have gone and it's as hot as it was yesterday and the day before that, the work is done. I am in a garden that is alive for the first time in a long time. I have a stubby garden that is not too long or not too short. Its half patio half grass. But the half that was grass is now a sea of roses of all colours and there are shingle paths snaking their way through them. At the far end of the garden where there was just a brick wall there is now a wall of mirrors set up in such a way so that little will Poppy see nothing but grass and paths and roses. The rose bushes themselves have no thorns, each one has been trimmed and I cannot get my head around how long that must have taken Jacob to do. But to Jacob there is no such thing as time.

I go to the fridge and take out the last two beers and am glad there is only two left as that is all that is needed and I hand Jacobs his and we clink the bottles together and we each take large gulps.

I am stood right next to him and it is like being next to a nothing that has a solid form. I feel no heat coming from him, he has no scent, nor does he seem to have an aura about himself, which I know sounds stupid but it's true at the same time. All he has are his noises and I put my hand on his shoulder not just because I want to make sure he's real but also to let him know that I am not afraid.

"You are a man of many talents, Jacob. A simple thank you does not seem enough."

And he looks at me but I don't look at him.

"Will Poppy like it?" He says and I can hear a type of want in that voice that he thinks he doesn't have the capability of showing.

I tap him on the shoulder, "An insane amount, my friend."

~

Gathering the tools together, I put them in the toolbox he brought with him - which looks handmade and probably is – and I notice that he is just standing there looking at what he has done and he doesn't move or turn his head, just keeps looking straight ahead. His machines are whirring and clunking.

"What is it you want to say?"

He doesn't move. "I don't know how to say it, so it may be best that I show you."

"Show me what?" I get flashes of images in my head of that scene from one of the Terminator movies when Arnie cuts half his arm off to prove he's a robot and that he's from the future. "It's nothing gross is it?"

Jacob shakes his head and takes in a lung full of air through his nose and lets it out his mouth. "No. Nothing like that. Come for tea at mine tonight and I shall show you. Seven alright with you?"

"Yes." I say and instantly feel tired and the sun is on me like a spotlight but I want to go because everything about this man is intriguing and I don't want to treat him like I feel like I have treated all the others, so I shake the tiredness off and squint my eyes against the pearls of light that engulf the man in front of me.

Jacob finishes off his beer, we thank each other for the help - which is odd because I should be thanking him not the other way around - and then he is gone. I don't escort him out this time; I just stay in the garden and admire it.

~

I knock on the door of the house that is frozen in time and it's just after seven but you couldn't tell the hour because the sun is still high and it's just as hot as it was at midday. My body feels tired. My mind alive. I have the same jitters in my gut that I had the day I married Emily and I can feel the juices fizzing and gurgling in my belly.

I'm not really sure what to expect tonight. Jacob's house reminds me of the home my grandmother used to live in. Her dinners were grey and tasteless and there always seemed to be cabbage on the plate. If ever I was to have lunch there, it would be spaghetti on toast and even that would taste of nothing. I made sure I ate the lot though, otherwise she would cut off my tail and at six years old I didn't know what my tail was but had an idea that having it cut off wouldn't be too pleasant. Now that I do know, what my tail is I think it odd that she would threaten to cut it off.

To the side of me and on the floor is the wire framed milk bottle holder only now there are two empty milk bottles sparkling in the nothing light. I can almost feel the sensation of tearing off the tin foil cap from the lip of the bottle and the cold, wet feeling the glass would have against my hand.

The door clicks open. I am greeted with the scent of motor oil and freshly cut grass. It's a strange smell and I can feel my nose turning up at it.

"Hello James."

"Hi Jacob." And he holds out his hand to me and I shake it. Behind me there are raised voices coming from a house across the street. A moped screams past. Jacob looks past me and his eyes follow that moped as it crosses his path. When it's gone, he lets go of my hand and with his other gestures for me to enter.

The house has the exact same layout as mine but the décor is so different that you would easily think otherwise. Walking through the hallway, I peek into the front room and there is a small television on an old side table, two armchairs and plain magnolia walls. Much like my front room Jacob has kept the original ceiling rose. To me it is a nothing room, unlived in, but in there and around me and wherever I seem to go in this house there is a pressure pushing down on me and I feel small and find it hard to breath even though I can feel my chest going in and out like it always has. In the hallway, stairs lead up to the bedrooms and the single bathroom. I don't go up there just keep going down the dark hall where flowery wallpaper keeps catching my eye and distracting me. The kitchen is old and painted white and there is no breakfast bar or dishwasher or modern American style fridge freezer crowding the room. Its units are all cubes of yellow plastic and fake wooden worktop. I want him to say something, I want to say something, but can't, and so go on looking around as if this is a crime scene and I'm a Detective. Actually no. This is a museum, I the visitor, Jacob the curator. The hallway feels hot and stuffy and when I reach the dining room I feel the draft coming from the open back door and the pressure that's is pulling me down lessens and I feel I can breathe again so I take in a deep gulp of cool air and the smell of cut grass and oil rockets through my nose and stinks up all my senses.

In the dining room, along the walls, there are shelves filled with books. In the corner by the back door, there is a large unit and behind its murky glass doors there are little shiny objects and pictures and glass orbs and other little trinkets. I want to look in there; it looks interesting. The fire pit in the chimneybreast has been removed and in its place is a music stand with an old record player and stacks of records. Next to that is a laptop. In the middle of the room is a large table surrounded by four chairs. On the table is tonight's meal and I try not to laugh when I see it, but it's tough going and he must see that I am looking a little confused because he says:

"I don't get to cook much. In fact I have never cooked. There wasn't any food in the house so I went to the shop on the corner and bought what I thought you might like."

I scratch my head. I don't want to seem ungrateful, or cocky, or that I know better, but it is really hard not to when faced with what's on the table.

"It is the thought that counts." I turn and see that he is stood in the door way looking at the table so I turn back and walk over to it and pick up the red tube of Pringles which happen to be the flavour I particularly despise and then put them back down where they were in between the curry Pot Noodle and an unopened round box of Dairylea – the cheese kids will do anything for.

"This will be fine." And I can see myself phoning for another kebab when I get home because I am already starving and what is on the table doesn't interest me in the slightest.

"Would you like a drink?"

"Yeah, please."

And I walk behind him as he walks into the kitchen and I notice that he isn't wearing his flat cap. Replacing the tufts of hair, that make up his crown is a circular piece of copper coloured metal with three-square indents – his screws to a locked world of wonder. It looks worn but still shines and it is a doorway to his inner workings, his Narnia. That's how I think of it. I am sure someone once said that the eyes are the gateway to our souls but that isn't true of Jacob. His eyes are merely machines and it is that little round metal cap that provides the gateway to his soul. If he even has a soul, which I think he does but I know if I asked him he would say he didn't.

Jacob opens the small fridge which has chrome handles and a name also in chrome on the door – FRIGIDAIR – and after taking out the two bottles and closing the door the machine shakes as the compressor kicks in and Jacobs tick-clunk, tick-clunk, tick-clunk, is joined by another rattling heartbeat.

"It's old but it still works." He hands me the bottle of Budweiser, "A bit like me."

And we clink the bottles together and I walk through the dining room and into the garden.

~

Once in the garden – which is the same shape and size as mine - I look up and see the back of my house and it looks like all the others, except mine has the loft conversion I know many down my part of the road want but can't afford and who cares why we could afford it.

There is a soft breeze tonight and it carries with it the smell of the sea and it smells sour and of drying sea weed and so the tide must be out and I know that because I have lived near the sea my whole life. Sea gulls fly here and there and an occasional magpie or raven – though it could be a crow or a rook because they all look the same to me – swoops across the gardens like deaths shadow. I don't like birds, perhaps they don't like me, why should they.

Jacobs's garden is just grass. Well kept, traditional. He has a shed and I am drawn to it, as all men love a shed, it's programmed in. In that shed is a blue light that shines nearly all the time. But it isn't shining now and the shed looks like any other wooden shed that I have seen a thousand times before.

"What do you do build in there?"

"In the shed? Replacement parts for me mainly. Though I do like to build little wind-up machines like Albert used to build, though recently I have been experimenting."

"Experimenting?" I turn and Jacob is looking at me and I feel his eyes trying to look inside me, trying to take a peek at my thoughts and I want to shield my eyes from him so I look away. I can hear his own machines come to life.

"Yes. Experimenting. Building on Albert's work."

He is keeping something from me and I can feel my defences starting to rise and if I am not careful tonight will end too soon and I shall never see him again. If this was anyone else, I think I would have lost my temper by now. But this isn't someone else, this is Jacob, and even though I don't know him all that well, and maybe never will truly know him, I do like him.

"What is all this for, Jacob?" I sound needy but that doesn't matter to me as I need answers. I wave my arms in the air and some beer spills on the floor, "Why am I here?"

"Do you trust me?"

"I have no idea."

Jacob places his beer on the dining table where it looks like a drunks feast is about to take place.

"Follow me."

I do.

~

We leave his house, heading east, our shadows stretch out ahead of us, the sun is strong on the back of my neck and will be for hours to come, the sun hardly seems to set this time of year. We walk side by side along the pavement that is lined by streetlights and cars. Crossing roads without really looking, we don't talk, just keep walking until we reach the main road and have to wait by a set of traffic lights because there is a cross roads here and it's dangerous. If I was a philosophical man, I could think of this moment in my life as a crossroads. But I am not, so to me it's just a crossroads with a pub on one corner, a petrol station on the other and behind me is a Co-op and a set of bill boards that advertise goods I couldn't give a shit about. I can smell sawdust in the air and that is coming from the timber yard that is a few meters behind me, neatly tucked away behind the billboards.

We cross the road and continue heading east. The houses are gone, as too are the cars lining the roads. This is the road to the industrial estate so it's wider than the others are and its tarmac is rutted and well used. In the winter, it can become a muddy stretch of road that you have to be careful walking along as you can soon be covered in all kinds of filth. Today it is dry and dusty and to highlight that a truck drones by carrying sacks of pea shingle and it kicks up clouds of dust into our faces so I turn away but see that Jacob doesn't. The road starts to rise as we continue on and metal railings poke up through the pavement protecting you from the road and the height. Walking over the railway track where two years ago lovers in a suicide pack leapt to their deaths and was crushed beneath the wheels of a freight train. Back then, I was sad for them because Emily was still alive but now I hate them, they had their chance at love and sharing their lives with someone else but they threw it away. They weren't even young. They were adults for Christ's sake.

When we are at the top of the bridge I look to my right and left just in case there are any trains coming and so does Jacob and I am sure he shows a little bit of disappointment when we see that there are no trains coming from either direction, Jacob looks down to the floor and shrugs his shoulders.

Ahead of us and to the right are the allotments and it's all green and alive in there. Dotted here and there are flagpoles and their flags – some the cross of Saint George, others of the Union Flag and one is the Confederacy flag, which always annoys me because I don't think people really understand what flying that flag really means – sway lazily in the summer breeze. My father and his father once had a plot of land here. They didn't own it; you can't own an allotment, only lease it for no charge from the council. I went there when I was a kid and helped them in their daily chores, which seemed never ending and to them must have been monotonous but to me were the stuff dreams were made of.

I look over hoping of a memory to pop up and remind me which plot of land they had but nothing comes to me and I wonder even if it did how that would better my life. It wouldn't, and now a memory does come to me and it's the same one I always have and it's when I am digging up the carrots with my own little fork and I am not paying attention to what I am doing even though grandpa has told me too but I don't care what he says because I am young and he is old and that it the way of things. I keep on digging without paying attention and then there is a booming yell of pain. My grandpa was a big man and he boomed no matter what he did, and I look at him and his face is twisted in agony. My dad rushes over so I look to the floor and one of the prongs of my fork has gone through grandpa's boot, through his foot, through the rubber sole and into the dirt. I can still hear my dad laughing because everything to him was funny back then and my grandpa swore at him so I laughed because I was only eight and swearing was funny. My dad pulled the fork out of my Grandpas foot and he screamed and jumped and hopped about like a man on fire. I laughed so hard I was nearly sick. They left me there for three hours whilst grandpa was having his foot fixed up in hospital. I dug up the carrots and cleaned them off as I was told and when that was done, I pulled up some rhubarb and cleaned that up too. I was hungry and didn't really know what to do so I ate that rhubarb and by the time my dad had gotten back I was rolling on the floor in agony so he took me back to the hospital and he didn't say much on the journey up there. I wanted him to tell me it was going to be okay, that I was just silly for eating too much and that I wasn't going to die. I honestly thought I was going to die.

But I was all right; I had just eaten raw rhubarb and so it was my own fault I had cramps and was shitting through the eye of a needle. On the way home, my dad started laughing as we sat in his purple van. He had a stroke ten years later. Ten years to the day as all that happened. He didn't laugh at that. No one laughed because he was a good man; everyone loved him, admired him and respected his work ethic blah blah blah. I'm not like him in that way.

~

The allotments stay to our right as we keep on walking and we haven't said one word to each other for twenty minutes.

On the other side of the road there are builder's yards and side roads that lead off to places unknown but there must be stuff down there of importance to someone as I can see little metal sheds and metal chimneys whisper grey clouds of vapour. Not too far down the road, the allotments will stop and the road will take a sharp turn to the left and from there it will join a dual carriageway.

"Where are we going?"

"Just a bit further on. You know the road that runs along the back of the allotments?"

"Yep."

"There."

"To do what?"

The breeze drops and I can hear Jacobs's pistons working in his legs. "Not to do. To see." Then he looks over to the allotments. "I've always wanted an allotment."

"Why haven't you ever put your name down for one? The waiting time's a bitch but it's not like you've got that worry."

"I don't exist, so I can't have one."

There is no answer to that. I could press about why he doesn't use his garden for such things but every man has his reasons. I too would have liked an allotment though the reality of owning one would be far removed from the dream. I too could use my garden for such a purpose, but I haven't so why should I question someone else? What gives me the right? So I keep on following Jacob along the dusty road and the wrecked pavement and then the road angles to the left and I turn to the right and the pavement stops and turns to grass. There is a road here but it is old, it has turned to pot holes and greying gravel. Only the allotment traffic uses it and the occasional truck going up to the factory. It is a short road with a fence at the end and a gate on the right hand side, which is the entrance to the allotments. On the left is the doorway Jacob mentioned and I can just about make out a little path that goes alongside the factory. I know the path but have never used it or really paid any attention to it in the past.

It is this path we turn down and the world gets darker. There are tall thin trees among us and it smells of rotten earth down here and I am following Jacob matching his steps so not to stumble. On my left, the factory wall looms high and it is covered with ivy, which I brush past, and it tries to stick to me using its summer sap. Even though the trees are tall and the branches come nowhere near my head I feel like I need to duck down. It's oppressive in here. Wet leaves mush beneath my feet and now that we are close together and are in tight confinement I can hear Jacob; the tick-clunk, the whirring of his mind, the swoosh of his pistons and where before I had found a strange comfort in this, down here I don't like those sounds. I hope those aren't the last noises I hear.

The factory wall stops, the ivy reaches out it but has nowhere to go so that too just ends and the tress that were just on my right are now all around me. I can't see up ahead, just the back of Jacob. The trees ease their domination on my right and the small forest that I knew nothing about widens into what once may have been a clearing but is now a sea of roses. Wild splashes of red, pink, white and black. The smell is sickly sweet and overpowering. Little fat bees float about, their buzz nature's interference to my ears.

"They came from here?"

Jacob nods and points to a bare patch of earth. "They will grow back in time. They always do."

Moving on, the clearing narrows until it is a single file path and then the trees come back and now it is dark and hot again and Jacob moves a little faster so I match his pace.

When he stops and kneels down I do likewise and it is like being a child on the hunt for a monster.

He turns to me and places his finger on his lips and I question him with my wide eyes and try to stare past him but can see anything but trees and dead leaves and shadows.

My grey t-shirt grows darker under the arms.

Jacob whistles and that sharp squeal hangs in the air, suspended by the muggy summer mist. Moments later there is a rustling from the bushes and I am alert and ready to run though my legs are becoming numb being knelt like this and I wonder how far I would get if a monster really did come bounding out of there.

But it isn't a monster. It's just a dog and it walks up to Jacob and licks his outstretched hand and then sits in front of him. Jacob strokes his head and scratches behind his ears and the dogs wags its tail leaving an arc of bare earth beneath it.

I rest my knees on the ground and the ground is hard. Some birds are singing in the trees above me and the wind makes the leaves rustle and flutter as it blows on by but I pay that little attention because it is the dog I have been brought here to see. It looks like any other dog to me; I'm not really a dog person. That's not to say I don't like them, just don't see the point. This fella is old and grey and his not-so-white fur is matted but he's not flea bitten or full of illness. He looks relatively healthy and his eyes shine in the mottled light. Those eyes pay me no attention; they are solely focused upon Jacob, upon his master. More accurately, they are focused on his jeans pocket.

"I can see what you're looking at. You just wait a bit there, old boy." Jacobs's voice is low but not soft or comforting, it's as if he has a volume button and right now it's turned down to two.

Then I notice the something that has been gnawing at my senses. The birds above me stop singing and the leaves stop doing whatever it is they were doing and it is as though nature wants me to hear this something and so all around me becomes quiet so that I can.

I stand up. My right leg cracks that make the dogs ears perk up and he sniffs the air but doesn't look at me; he wants whatever is in Jacobs's pocket.

"Is he doing what I think he is doing?" I have to wipe the sweat from the back of my neck and can feel the t-shirt I am wearing stick to my chest. For some reason I start to feel a little on edge, like the tingling feeling before a summer storm or the itchy scratchy sensation I sometimes get in the middle of the night when the darkness is all around me and it's as if that darkness has fingers and they are brushing against my skin. My hairs stand on edge.

"Yes. It's why I brought you here. To meet him." and Jacob takes out a small round treat and hands it to the dog who doesn't need a second invite and quickly gobbles it down; his whiskered chops slapping with every chew.

"Why?" Which isn't what I want to ask but I am thirsty and hot and a little on edge and feeling itchy scratchy so I can't quiet keep focus because the little dog below me, who I am sure I have seen before, is ticking like Jacob ticks. Now that he has moved and the sun is shining down on him and I know what I am looking at I can see that one of his legs is a different shape and has a different shade of fur than the other three.

"I found him," Jacob says stroking the dog, "lying in the street half dead, half bled out. Guessed he must have been hit by a car and left to die. I took him home and took him into the shed. His leg was broken and there was a deep gash on his shoulder so I cleaned his wounds up and gave him some water and as I did he licked my hand and eased himself into it and rested against my hand and he must have found comfort then because he fell asleep, didn't you old boy." Jacob scratched harder behind the dog's ear and the dog tail wags harder and faster and I am sure the dog is smiling.

Jacob stands and wipes his hands on his jeans but he keeps his eyes on the dog and doesn't turn to look me. Therefore, I too stare at the dog.

"As he slept I started to think; I never had my own dog even when I was young, even though I was surrounded by them. They were my dad's dogs, pack dogs, hunting dogs, not petting dogs as my dad used to say, so I just fed them and watered them and took them to the fields where they ran and then brought them back. Occasionally I buried them. I don't have memories of wanting a dog so I don't know if I ever did, but there I was, stood over a dying dog suddenly wanting to have one. Wanting him."

"How did you do it?"

"The way it was done to me. Just not as much because his injuries were only light compared to what had happened to me but it still took me most of that day and long into the night to remove his old leg and stop the bleeding and fix up that cut on his shoulder. Albert had stacks of drugs and medicines so I used smaller doses to make sure he stayed asleep. How he survived that I'll never know. He must be like me I guess; a survivor."

The dog stretches and his new leg reaches further out than the other front leg and there is a little pffft noise and clicking noise as the pistons and the gears work in tandem to make it all work.

"So you made him a new leg? Just like that. Fixed it to him like those bits were fixed to you?"

Now Jacob looks at me but I don't really know why as his face doesn't alter or his eyes narrow or anything like what you'd expect to happen in situations like this.

"Not just his leg." He says.

I look from Jacob to the dog who is now laying on the floor sniffing at something and I kneel down slowly, so as not to frighten the little fella, and he doesn't move, just lays there and I don't have to lean in too close to hear a familiar tick-clunk, tick-clunk, tick-clunk coming from the dogs chest. The dog's tail keeps on wagging.

I mumble, "You built him a heart." I reach out and stroke the dog and he is warm and his fur is wiry and I can feel my heart start to match that of the dogs. I am scared and the itchy scratchy feeling has been replaced with goose bumps and the shakes. Jacob takes a step forward and I can feel him right behind me and the dogs ears prick and twist this way and that.

"Yes I did." Jacob says, and he says it like building a heart to him is like me building an Airfix model of a Lancaster Bomber and with that same straightforward way of talking he goes on to say, "I can build one for Poppy too. I can save her, keep her alive. If you want me too."
Shelter

When I first met Emily, I had been sleeping rough for just under a year. I had nothing but an art pad and some pencils and the clothes on my back to call my own. I slept on the streets in a cardboard box behind a row of shops because when I left college I thought I was too good to get a job and too proud to go back to mum and ask for anything because the last time I tried it all went wrong. It's not that I had a bad relationship with my mum, just that I had moved on from the quaint world she had constructed for me in my youth and that she still lives in now and has built a wall to block out the real world. We weren't compatible at that moment although that would change in the years to come.

Where I called home was behind a row of four shops. They backed onto a locked alleyway whose gates I used to climb over every day. The alleyway wasn't grimy or hellish or any such thing. There weren't any holed out bins that were constantly on fire so as to warm the gathering vagrants. This was no dystopian greyed out nightmare. There were no hookers or pimps in purple suits or drug mules with dried out skin and veins the size of straws. It was just an old service road that seemed like a good place to try to survive in. Plus I liked it down there, it was comfortable, safe.

When I first pitched my life there and the owner of Tina's Tidd Bits came out carrying a sack of rubbish whistling the theme to The Good Life I thought she was going to call the police or shoo me away like a stray cat. But she didn't. Instead, she smiled, offered me a cup of tea and gave me the boxes that I made my shelter with. Her name was Rosie and she lent me a broom to sweep out the area she kept the wheelie bins in and let me make my shelter there and told me that I could stay there for as long as I needed to, just as long as I was no trouble, and didn't mind a chat and finally that there was no one else with me and that I didn't turn to drugs or cider.

She was an odd woman. I've never met anyone like her. She was tall, over six foot, heavy set with brown eyes and full lips. She played rugby at the weekends and went line dancing on a Wednesday night. She had a tattoo of a raven on her shoulder and a skull and cross bones on the back of her thigh. Rosie wore clothes from the 50's and I am sure she lived her life as if she were on the set of Grease, though sadly her real life Danny was just out of reach. She had a mouth as foul as any builder and a wit as dry as gin. Her temper rose and fell like a mountain range and when she laughed it made my body shake and my head pound. But mixed in with all that was a sweetness that always shocked me, a softness that beguiled her exterior. She was a lover of poetry and of fine art. She collected little china tea cups and would hold them in her massive hands so gently, so carefully, as if she knew that one twitch would crush them into powder. She would read poetry and cry. There wasn't a Disney song she didn't know or an ABBA track she couldn't help but dance along too. Rosie was a complicated woman who remembered everything with a shattering precision. She had knowledge of almost everything and wasn't scared of anything or anyone.

Maybe it was her looks, though she did have a handful of dates during that year, and she wasn't unattractive by any stretch of the imagination, or maybe it was her size or her complicated ways that meant she was single and unloved, I'm not too sure nor will never know because I never asked and she never spoke about it, but I never saw her with a man that was her equal.

There are some people who are happy alone; perhaps she was one of those.

She liked my drawings, would run her fingers over the fine lines and giggled when I drew whatever dripped from my brain and into my fingers. Her massive brown eyes would watch my every move.

I designed her a tattoo. It was a blood red rose in full bloom with a honeybee at its centre and she took me to the studio and I watched her get it inked into her left breast and all the time she smiled at me but I didn't smile back as I thought it strange to be doing what she was doing. I appreciate the artistry of tattoos, but not the reasoning.

At that point I couldn't give a shit about what I drew, in all honesty, I was sick of drawing and painting and composition and following the rules and only drawing what people who knew nothing of art wanted to see. It still bugs me now but not as much. Age does that. But when you are young you see the world with fresh eyes and hate it. And I hated it so much. It seemed as though I was always angry, angry at everything, but I had no reasons so it seemed a futile type of anger that I had and Rosie always laughed at me when I started to spout off. My issues seemed larger than life itself back then, in the great all seeing eye of hindsight all I was being was a prick.

Rosie's little shop of trinkets, of hats, of old shoes and dolls, of bone china tea cups and paintings, of tin lunch boxes and weird African head masks, of scented sticks and tarot cards and of small boxes of healing stones, and dark corners and big windows wasn't always busy but there was a constant trickle of people and the till opened and closed rhythmically and soon my drawings were in the front window and soon people were buying them, even asking for them, which was a gruesome idea that I struggled with but gave into because I needed the money. Some sold cheap, others not so cheap. One particular picture, which was of the alleyway I slept in and had me starring in it, sold for £175, which even today seems completely ridiculous. If I could get that picture back I would and I would give the buyer back their £175 plus interest.

Our odd little friendship grew but there was always a distance between us because I was a tramp and she wasn't. I had very little and she had something. People would leave black bin bags full of clothes in her door way and these she dressed me in and made sure that I changed regularly and would wash my stuff and iron it and watch me undress and then dress. When the weather was cold I was allowed to sit in the stock room and drink hot tea and when it was hot she would bring me water with little ice balls floating in it. Back then it didn't bother me that I was being treated like a dog, but now I suppose it does but I forgive her as she cared.

To call myself a tramp seems harsh, though there is a fairness to it, that is what I was after all, but I didn't beg or steal or get drunk or poke the needle so to me I wasn't a tramp or a vagrant. I was lost.

I mentioned this to Rosie and so she called me her Lost Boy.

I spent the money I made from my drawings on art supplies and food. Rosie would keep the money in an account she set up for me so that I wouldn't spend it all. That money went toward Emily's engagement ring.

I bought Rosie a necklace made of silver. There was a little charm attached to it of a sailor girl flashing her chest. Rosie smiled and said nothing but looked embarrassed when I gave it to her wrapped in a blue and white striped paper bag. I helped her put it on. My hands did not shake as if they would when I first did this for Emily and that says something of my relationship with Rosie. She felt hot when I put it around her neck and when I lifted her hair away from the nape of her neck I swear I heard her moan.

On a summer's night when the sun was just an orange smear in the sky and the world was a million miles from the two of us, we drank cider together from a massive glass jug and talked shit and we each realised the same thing at the same time and for the rest of the night; as the sun set and the half-moon rose and the stars shone overhead, we spent in my little cardboard house and we had sex that was awkward but fulfilling and we didn't talk after, just knew that what we had done was for each other. For no one else. Not for labelling or analysing or anything like that. It was just a way to show that we were alive and that we still mattered to a world that had started not to give a flying fuck about anything except money, status, religion and everyone else's self-righteous bullshit. There was no love between us, no future for us, because she wasn't for me and I wasn't for her and we were both okay with that.

Then the next day came and it was both the end of it and the start of it.

The end of it was Rosie lying dead on the floor, a knife jutting from her back and the till empting out behind her and anything that was shiny or looked expensive was being taken and rammed into a backpack. The start of it was me screaming for help and trying to save her and then Emily running into the shop because she heard me screaming from outside.

When the paramedics came, I yelled at them to be careful because her china cups were on the floor and some had been smashed and I couldn't have them all being smashed.

My hands were covered in blood. It was her blood and it felt heavy and seemed to take days to wash out.

At first the medics thought I was her son, such was the age difference between Rosie and me. When I told them who I was they wouldn't allow me to ride with her to the hospital so I should have kept my mouth shut and that made me angry. That's when Emily first held my hand, not to comfort me, but she could see I was getting angry and it was the only thing she could think of doing to stop me from doing something stupid. And it had worked.

I watched them take my friend away, but their lights didn't flash and their siren didn't scream because she was already dead and the ambulance just joined the queue of traffic and when the lights went green it made its way along the road and nobody seemed bothered that a woman who had been murdered lay in the back of it. Even the police wore vacant looks on their faces and resigned themselves early that there would be no Hollywood ending to this.

Emily came with me to the funeral and we were the only ones to attend and I was sick behind a tree I was so upset. I could see my life was over, the rock I had anchored myself too was now quicksand and I was being pulled under. I would start to drink because that is what I thought was the thing I had to do in such situations. From drink, I would go to drugs and my daily routine would consist of sticking a needle in my arm and then robing some poor bastard just to get another fix. Stick and repeat, stick and repeat, stick and repeat until I died in an alleyway with a syringe sticking out of my arm and sick dribbling from my mouth and my eyes just looking straight ahead into a world that didn't care or presumed to either. I sat on the ground and told all this to Emily and she listened and held my hand and didn't offer advice or mother me or tell me everything was going to be all right because she didn't know or pretend to know. That is when she told me her secret. A secret she had told to no one but shared it with me so that I felt special and had something to cling to.

The next week was my own little piece of nothing where I left that alleyway and tried to make something of my life because Rosie would have wanted that. I went back home and spoke to my mum who I hadn't spoken to in over a year. I became a man then I suppose and was treated as such and found a place to live and a job that paid well and got back my friends and made new ones but all the time I thought about Rosie and I missed my friend and I wished she could have seen the man I was turning into to. The man I have become,

Rosie had been there for me. Emily had been there for me.

~

"But she's not now." I say and to Jacob it makes no sense because he has just told me that he can fix Poppy by building her a new heart and then I went into a daydream about the woman who owned a shop called Tina's Tidd-Bits but was called Rosie. Maybe it was the dog that made me think of her, I don't really know but my legs feel heavy and I can feel a cold sweat running down my back and it's uncomfortable. Everything has become uncomfortable.

"Pardon." Jacob says and he sounds a million miles away but he isn't because he is still right behind me.

"Nothing." And I stand up. I don't want to kneel down anymore; I don't want to be here anymore. I want to go home.

My empty home.

I hear Jacob take a step back but I don't look at him I look at the dog and see what Jacob has done to him and I'm not sure if I like it. Something about that dog isn't right and I don't want him doing that to Poppy.

"I'm going home." I tell Jacob. I feel like a schoolboy who's been playing football with jumpers for goalposts down the local park and now that I have had enough, I want to go home for tea and to see my mummy.

Jacob goes to say something but I put my hand up, almost touching his face but making sure I don't, and he closes his mouth with an audible pop and I still don't look at him because I don't want to as I'm close to tears or punches or screaming or something else that I might regret. I might start a fight, though I will lose.

I walk back the way we came, back into the road and am relieved that it is all still there and how I remembered it. From there I walk home not thinking but thinking all the same. I cross the railway bridge and now a train rattles beneath me but I don't wave at it because I am not five years old and so the driver of the train doesn't wave back at me nor toot his fake air horn. I don't look behind me to see if Jacob is following and know that he isn't and even if he was I wouldn't do anything about it just walk a little faster.

What he says plays on my mind as I cross the main road not waiting for the little green man to flash off and on. He can fix her, as if she is a model kit or a dropped piece of LEGO and not a complicated person with blood and tissue and muscle and bone and a soul and a mind and is so tiny and fragile not like a mutt dog. She's my baby. My little Poppy-Flower who can't be fixed or made of clockwork like a toy from the Victorian age.

"If you want me too." I say to the lamppost as I brush past it and turn down my road. Of course I would want him to save her. But not like that, and not just because it won't work. If a real heart can't fix her then a fake one won't either. It's never that simple.

But it fixed him, Emily tells me whilst I unlock the front door and slam it shut behind me.

"Yeah but look at him now. He's fucked up." But I know that isn't true and even though I am the only one that heard me say those words I still regret them and wish I could take them back.

I have no beer in the fridge. There is no food anywhere in this fucking house. The cupboards are bare except for tins of spaghetti and baked beans and shortbread and crisps and biscuits. I don't want any of it. I want a beer and a microwave meal and a cheap shitty yoghurt and then a handful of chocolate cake. But I don't have any of that and each cupboard I go into is slammed shut and shakes and soon the inevitable happens and one rips off half clear of its hinges so I kick the crap out of it until it is torn away and the door and the hinges and shards of wood fly across the kitchen knocking over the bin. My frustration has consumed me.

That's when I cry. Just fall to the floor and cry, not for any reason but at the same time and for all the reasons and because I can and it is the only way to get out what I need to get out.

He can fix her when the doctors cant. But what would I have to do for her to be fixed? Picturing that blood soaked scene I wipe the tears from my eyes and crawl over to the fridge and take out one of her little juice cups. The juice is so sweet and yet so sour it makes my eyes tingle and my tongue retract. I empty the little plastic container down my throat and throw it on the floor. I stand there with my head against the cold metal of the fridge door with my hands in my pockets and my eyes closed.

Maybe I fell asleep or passed out or just got into some sort of waking coma because the next thing I hear is my phone ringing and an hour has past.

~

"Hey, sis, it's late, what's up?"

"Nothing, just thought I'd let you know that little Poppy is sound asleep and all is well. You okay?"

"Yeah fine." And I inhale through my snot-filled nose. "Hay fever I guess. You girls had fun today?"

"Yep. Non-stop party action up until about three, then she felt tired so we watched movies and ate crap until bedtime. Think she might be getting a cold or something, little lump is a bit hot and restless."

I swallow hard and can feel the sick wanting to come up. My hands are shaking and I close my eyes and feel my mouth start to ache as the muscles contract to stop the tears from pouring again.

"I'm sure she'll be fine." Just add that lie to the pile of others I have told. "Just tuckered out I expect from all the fun. How are you?"

"Just as tired as Poppy. Probably going to hit the sack after I get off the phone to you. You sure you okay? You sound a little... you sound as if you've been crying."

I shake my head and the skin on my forehead squeaks against the metal. "Nah, I'm good. Honestly. Just been working in the garden all day and need to sit down. Maybe I caught the sun a bit. You'll love what we did out there, Karen. Poppy will lose her shit over it."

"We? Who's we?"

I take the phone away and mouth my frustrations.

When I put the phone back I say, "Me, I meant me. Jesus I'm tired."

"Oh-kay." I can hear that she doesn't believe me but she won't dig any deeper because Karen isn't like that.

"I'll let you go, then." Karen adds.

We both say our goodbyes and I end the call before she does and put the phone on the breakfast bar and step away from it like it is carrying a disease.

~

I order a Chinese and eat too much and pass out on the sofa and when I wake up at midnight the house stinks of garlic and chillies so I clean up. I don't wash up, just put the food in the bin and pile the plates on the side.

Knowing I won't be able to sleep I lock the front and inside doors and head upstairs into the attic.

I wonder if he's out there, working under the blue light in his little shed and know even before I look out of the window that he is. And sure enough, the blue light is on and there is a shadow moving in there and I can here hammering and tinkering going on. Behind that hammering and tinkering there would be other noises too. Ticking and clunking noises and whirring noises and piston wheezes.

"What's he building in there?"

The window steams up and I draw a little smiling face with finger dots for eyes and then wipe it away and now it's like it never existed. The remote control to my stereo is on the windowsill and I press play and Kool Thing by Sonic Youth comes on.

"What's he building in there? What the hell is he up too? It's no toy he's building in there, nothing for the kids or an aunty or an uncle or a cousin. He doesn't have any of that. What is he building in there? Some clockwork wonderment. An upgrade. A heart?"

1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins comes on and I quickly turn off the stereo because that was Emily's favourite song and I remember laughing when she told me that was her favourite because her reason for thinking so was that the band had written it especially for her as that was the year she was born in. And when I laughed she got a little mad and hit me on the shoulder; hard, harder than she should have, and now I know why and it's a simple reason; why shouldn't she think that Billy Grogan wrote it for her? What harm did it do? That little white lie she told and knew was a lie but it made her happy and filled her life with a little more joy and so who cares if she thought that song was hers. I hit myself on the same spot on my shoulder to see if the pain exists.

Just then, as the pain in my shoulder throbs, the door to the shed opens and out walks Jacob, wearing his flat cap as always and his long sleeve shirt even though it is still warm outside. I know the reason he's wearing those. The real reason, and then it strikes me that it's another secret that has been shared with me and that makes me angry because why do people think they can just share their deepest and most treasured thoughts with me? What makes me so special?

Emily says, "Because you care, James. Because we trust you. Because they are shared so that you can see that person for what they really are. You can see Jacob for what he really is, like you saw me for who I really was."

"He's wants to save people." And Jacob looks up then and he waves at me and I wave back and smile but he doesn't smile and I don't mind because I'm sure he would if he could.

I turn away from the window and see that Jacob is going back into his shed. I turn the stereo back on and listen to the song that Emily liked to believe was written for her and who am I to say that it wasn't.

When the song is finished and the house is filled with silence I draw and for the first time in a long time, what I want to draw is clear in my mind. I want to draw what has meant the most to me in my life. So I draw my mum who bandaged my wounds, my sister who is my friend and a mother to my motherless daughter, then Rosie who saved me from something and was a little china cup both fragile but yet strong enough to withstand a flood, then the woman that I love and always will love no matter what, and finally my little Poppy whom I can't describe with words just that I love her and she is me, all of me, and she can have all of me and leave nothing but dust.

I use a black pencil though I do add some colour. Not too much because I'm not in that place yet but enough for it to mean something. Enough for me to have hope. Though I am sure I have read that hope can kill a man.

'Shelter' I title the picture and scribble it in the bottom right hand corner as well as my name and date and I put it into a simple black frame and hang it on the wall.

It's late so I go to bed. I fall asleep instantly and don't dream and when I wake up I feel a little different, not so lost as I did yesterday, and although nothing has changed, something has changed.

Emily is still dead and Poppy is still dying and I am still torn between what I should do and what I should forget and not do, but still, I feel different.

The light outside is pounding against the back of the blinds in my bedroom. It wants to come in. It wants to brighten my day so I open the blinds and let the sun engulf me with my arms outstretched.

I am the sunlight, I think to myself, for if someone were to come into the room they would see nothing but the sunlight and would wonder where I have gone and when they couldn't find me would think that I have been burned away to nothing by the suns power and that would be that.

And then I think of a Steinbeck book I read not too long ago and a quote from that springs to mind and still drenched in the suns power and blinded by its light I say:

"Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one."

To me that seems apt right now though I can't quite figure out why. When I open my eyes by God it hurts but I take the pain because that is all there is sometimes; pain and truth, and my eyes water and that water runs down across the creases in my face that time has so graciously provided.

Outside the world is as it was but inside me it is not and that's the truth of it. Poppy is dying and there is a man that could save her and that too, is the truth of it and those thousand lives we might lead all come down to the simple choices we make in our everyday, monotonous lives.
Razor Sharp

I shower and dress. Today is another warm day so its shorts and t-shirt again but I don't mind wearing these sorts of clothes because they are comfortable and I could wear them all year round. I eat a little bit of breakfast but am not hungry. I don't have any coffee just water and drain two pints in quick succession. Today is going to be a day, which can go in a number of directions, and it feels like everything that I do seems meant to happen. I am sure Karen would spout some Wiccan bullshit about fate and destiny and Mother Earth and that our lives are pre-ordained. But I am in control today. It is up to me what happens and I hold the fate of mine, Jacobs, Karen's, and most importantly; Poppy's life in my hands.

Before leaving the house, I take a look at the garden but not for too long because I don't want to be distracted and I turn off the lights that are on for no reason. Outside, I lock the front door and open the new gate that Jacob made me and the rose and the fairy glisten in the sunlight. I ease the gate closed, walking along the road with small steps.

Jacobs's road is empty today. Two cars line the street and I see not a single person. I don't even know what day it is though it feels like a Monday but I can't be sure. The wind is behind me so I can't smell the piles of God only knows what outside of Sammy's house but up ahead I can see it is all still there and sea gulls fly overhead and land on his walls and then quickly fly away. Even they can't deal with the stench and that makes me chuckle.

I walk a little faster as I go by Sammy's house and don't look in there just in case he is there. Then something he said to me comes to mind and I look at my phone and see that it is 11:30.

"Shit." I remember that Jacob won't be in. He goes out every morning. Like clockwork, Sammy had said, and so right now he won't be there and all of a sudden I feel weak and unable to control what I want to control.

"You tread in dogs muck or suming?" Sammy asks me from behind the raised bush covering his front wall. And even though that made me jump, a part of me knew that he was there. He's always there; watching and waiting for someone to come, another chance of a customer, another chance to make a quid or two because that's what Rag and Bone men do and all at once I understand Sammy and can picture the world he comes from and still wants to be a part of even though that world is long gone and can never come back.

"I got a packet of cleaning wipes and some boot polish if ya have?"

I glance down to my shoes. They aren't covered in dog crap but there are the dried out remains of a previously laid dog turd by my right foot.

"Not today. Guess he's gone out for the morning?"

The Rag and Bone man pops his head over the bush and joins me in looking at my shoes and the mess by my right foot and in the still air I can smell him and it's a smell unlike anything else I have ever smelt before. He's close to death that guy, really close, and it oozes from him. If you could see colours then his would be dark brown and rotten.

"Pity." He says and I guess he didn't hear me.

"What? That I didn't tread in shit?"

He wheezed out a laugh and the illness that is deep inside him dribbled down his chin. "No, no, nothing like that. Would've been a pity cos' you aint wearing leather shoes and I aint got no cleaner for them things you is wearing. Pretty much got everything else though. You should come and take a look."

As there is nothing happening down at the level of my trainers I lift my head but I look straight ahead because I think if I turn and face him he will somehow drag me into his house and I shall be penniless come lunchtime.

"Maybe another day," and then repeat the question asked earlier and nod my head in the direction of his house, "So I guess he's out?"

Sammy wipes the spittle from his mouth with the sleeve of his dirty black suit jacket. "Nope, not today. Haven't heard a peep from him since he came back last night. Guess either he's in his workshop or he's dead. Why, you after him then?"

"Yeah."

I smile my thanks but not at him and he watches me as I walk away and turn into Jacobs forecourt. He mumbles something but I don't hear what he says or care what he says. Perhaps I was rude then but as with many things recently, I don't care. Jacobs's gate doesn't whine or creak or groan and its action is as smooth as mine and when I open it I get that same feeling I had the last time I was here and it feels as if the world is pressing itself down upon my shoulders and I feel small and helpless and it's hard to breathe. I knock on his door and wait and without looking down I know that the little wire basket is beside me. From the side there is shuffling and Sammy closes the door to his house and Jacob opens the door to his. The crushing, breathless feeling leaves me in an instant when I see Jacob stood there. He isn't wearing his flat cap, his sleeves are rolled up and his arms are dirty and I can see odd things moving in his arms and as much as I don't want to look I seem not to be able to look away.

"Thought I would never see you again." There is nothing in his voice to tell me that he is pleased to see me or he believes what he has just said. When I pry my eyes from his odd looking arms I scratch at one of mine and put my hands in my pockets and look up to him because he is stood in his hallway which is higher than I am stood in his forecourt. I see something on his face that surprises me.

"You're smiling."

But I wonder how real that smile is and as I wonder, the smile fades from his face and it's all plain and normal again. He is still ticking and clunking and I can see his machines working behind his man made eyes but to a passer-by, he looks like anyone else, but I know the truth.

"Do you want to come in?"

We walk through the house that I am not that familiar with and go through to the back room and into the garden and there are two seats and a small wooden table set up as if he knew I was going to come around.

"Would you like a drink?"

"Yes please. Water will do if that's okay."

"Of course." And off he goes back into the house. I don't sit down straight away because I am drawn to his not so little shed. It sits toward the back of the garden. There is a little window on the front and the wooden slats are dark not from stain but from age. Outside of the shed are plastic buckets of metal bits and bobs. Coils and springs, old tubes and wires and strands of copper and lengths of pipe. It is either discarded material or to be used later material. Either way, it is the stuff of which he is made.

"Here you go." Jacob hands me a pint of water and I drink half of it and put the glass onto the table. I look over to the shed again and try to look in through the window but the sun is above me and I can't see a thing.

"Would you like to see inside?"

"No." This is not exactly true because a part of me does want to. But I think of that shed as his world, his domain, his sanctuary. I don't want people to come into my world, to see where I do what I do and maybe he is the same as me in that regard even if he did offer me an insight.

"It's not that I don't want too, Jacob, believe me, a part of me would like to poke around in there but it doesn't seem right. That's your world, your secret place where others should not go. Maybe one day I will. But not today."

"Okay."

And we are both silent. Above us in the blue expanse a passenger jet flies from north to south filled with people either coming home from holiday or arriving on their holiday. From its wings, four white vapour trails mark where it has come from and I follow them down until they start to be blown sideways by the strong winds and then they are gone.

"We never went on a plane." I say and tuck my hands into the back pockets of my jeans.

Jacob looks up and sees what I see but probably sees it a lot clearer than I ever could.

"Me neither," He says, "Even during the war. It was all boats and trains back then. Even though I understand how they work, they are still a wonder to me. I can remember skies that were clear of planes and which were the domain of just the birds. Seems so long ago now. Everything moved along so quickly and nothing is as it once was."

I watch the plane slice through the sky and then Jacobs's house obscures my sight of it and then the plane is gone. I take in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Is it true, what you said last night; that you can fix her? Make her better?"

"Yes, I can. But I understand if you don't want me to do it; you hardly know me."

I sit down and place my hands on my lap but they won't settle down so I put them on the table and make them hold on tight to the glass of water.

"It's not that. At least I don't think it is. I thought I would do anything to save her. But that anything didn't consider you. The thought of losing Poppy when I know now that she can be saved makes me feel sick.

"You're right, I don't know you, but there is something about you that makes me trust you. Don't know what it is. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, perhaps? I've seen how hard it is for you to lie and I think I can tell when you do. It's why you want to do it that is playing on my mind. Well, that and how the hell you would go about it. A dog aint no little girl. A dog isn't my Poppy; you could end up killing her."

Jacob looks at me and I can see and hear the machines in his head whirring, slow at first, then faster, and as the speed increases so does the pitch and then his eyes focus and refocus and the whirring slows and Jacob says:

"You're right, I could kill her, that is but one of many outcomes, but so could the surgeons in the hospital if they were to carry out this operation. It's down to you, James. From what I know of you there seems little point in me giving you the percentages of failure or the details about the knowledge and skills that I have. This type of decision transcends logic."

Time passes by. The sky is motionless and around me, the trees and the leaves and the grass beneath them freezes like a winters grip has just taken hold of them. Creatures crawl and burrow in the small place, dark of the Earth and from their high places birds watch them but seem not to have the energy to swoop down and take them.

I like the nature that surrounds me, are breathing slowly, with great heaves of air and whistling sighs, sat waiting for something to happen.

~

When I was ten and my father was a few years away from his stroke I went to work with him during the summer months. The memory of that day makes me think that the sky was a brighter shade of blue and everything that surrounded me was larger than it actually was. The memory is shrouded in the mysteries that only ten-year-old boys know about.

That day was a special day for I was to be treated as his apprentice, not his son. I had shown an interest in woodworking, in tools and nails and screws and saws and drills and how doors worked and how houses were built. I was ten, a boy, and that's what we are supposed to be showing an interest in. My dad had other plans. He knew the reality of trade work and regretted not being told that truth when he was ten and went out with his father. Though why he had decided to take me out working is still a mystery to me. Maybe he wanted the company; perhaps he was sad, as he didn't get to see me that much.

The sky was fresh and new when my dad woke me up. My eyes were heavy and full of dust and grit until I wiped them clean an hour later whilst we were hurtling down the motorway. Where we went that day, I do not remember and will never know. It wasn't far from home but dads van wasn't fast so it felt like hundreds of miles away.

The house we worked in was set in the countryside and I was a city kid not used to the smells of trees and grass and the constant buzzing of bees and soft sawing of the crickets. The house we were working in was big and it seemed as though no matter how far I stepped away from it I couldn't get it all inside my field of vision. I always had to twist left or right to see it all.

My dad had worked in this house for many years. He knew the people that lived there quite well and they were polite to him and I said hello and smiled and the man of the house patted me on the head. Even at that age I could feel their dominance over us because they had money and we didn't and as much as they smiled and small talked, I could see them looking down at us. Perhaps they weren't like that; perhaps I am being harsh, though history tells me otherwise.

My dad and the man of the house – he had no children, just a wife – talked amongst themselves but I cannot remember what it was that they talked about. I heard them and their words went in but I stood there amazed by my surroundings. When they were done, the two men shook hands and even though the man of the house had more money than my dad did, my dad had bigger hands. My dad had hands like shovels.

My dad opened the back of his van and to this day I can still smell the cut wood, the oil, and the whiff of turpentine and white spirit and banana sandwiches that came drifting out. There was a small brown bottle of knotting solution that hung on a bit of string from one of his wooden shelves. That van was a cavern of wonder, but to me now it just looks like any other carpenters van in my mind's eye. I asked him what we were going to be doing and he grasped hold of my shoulder and turned me so that I was facing him. I had to look up, he was big and I was small. I always had to look up to him except when he was being buried and it felt wrong then that he was looking up at me so I turned away. As I looked up at him, he leaned over, placing both of his massive hands on my little bony shoulders.

"We're going to build them a little summer house. You an' me. Split the profits fifty-fifty. We're in this together now."

I can't remember what I said back and that might be because I didn't say anything. My body felt light and my head swam with joy and excitement and then fear because I didn't know how to build a house. I said what most ten-year-old boys would say:

"I don't know how to build a house."

And he laughed because everything was funny to him and as he laughed his body shook and because he was holding onto me I shook and started laughing too and I felt I could float away with my dad in that garden I was so happy.

"Don't worry about that, son. I shall teach you." He let me go and I felt weak all of a sudden as if he had been holding me up this whole time and maybe that's true.

After the laughter had died down, I didn't laugh again that day because nothing funny happened.

Just before lunch, when Dad was teaching me how to saw wood correctly and how to measure twice and cut once, we both heard a razor sharp scream coming from the field that was hidden from us by the big trees and the hedgerows. I knew there were horses in that field, I had heard them running and neighing and I could smell them too, but I knew it wasn't a horse that had screamed and stopped me and my dad from doing what we doing. Dad dropped the flat pencil he used to mark the wood onto the sawdust-covered grass and looked over to the field.

My dad told me to wait there, don't move, stay put, and he headed off toward the gate to the field where the horses were and where the scream had come from. I was ten and so did not wait there and went running after him and he closed the gate behind him but I was young and nimble and climbed over it and landed in the long grass on the other side and it was like I had leapt into a new world. There was nothing ahead of me but long grass and blue sky and in the far distance, giant trees rose up like huge guardrails. My dad had vanished. I didn't think of looking either side of me I was so amazed that there could be such a colossal expanse of grass that it froze me to the spot. The grass was long and the stems of it were wet and it soaked into my childishly blue jeans and it was the wet sensation that brought me out of my revelry and so I looked to my right; saw nothing, and as I turned to the left I started running because my dad had to be in that direction. When I looked up, I saw that he was and so I kept on running and dew sprayed all around me and flicked onto my fingers.

There were no horses that I could see, just grass and sky and distant trees and my dad walking in the direction that the scream had come from and was still coming from.

I finally reached dad and he opened his hand so I held it. I thought that he would tell me off for not doing as I was told. But he wasn't like that. He just looked down at me and smiled but I could see his concern as the scream changed to a cry and there was something else behind that scream; the sound of something struggling and whining. I got a little scared then. But I held my dad's hand tightly in in mine and my dad felt really strong right then. I questioned his strength, as his smile wasn't as convincing as it used to be.

Then the grass thinned and was like the grass we had on the school playing field. Ahead the grass finished and became shingle and a barn with five wooden doors was built upon it. Stables for the horses. Three horses poked their heads out and their ears were pointed up and they were all staring at the woman lying on the floor holding her leg. The horse next to her was twitching violently. My dad circled the collapsed horse and ran over to the woman making sure I was behind him because that horse looked mad and wild. Its eyes were so wide and so black it was like looking through a telescope into deep ancient space.

He talked to the woman - the woman of the house - and her hair was messy and her face white and her beige riding trousers were streaked with grass and there were blood red splotches blossoming through those trousers. What words of comfort my dad was saying I did not hear but she stopped crying and moaning and looked at him as Emily looked at me when she was about to die.

The horse kept on whining and twitching and I couldn't help but feel sorry for it and afraid of it at the same time. He was a big horse, silvery black, and shone with sweat. He was a strong horse, but that strength had left him so it just twitched and whined. Looking over the horse's body, I saw why he was in such distress. I turned my head away and closed my eyes and thought I would be sick but wasn't. Its rear legs were bent in the wrong direction and there was a cut on its flank that was deep enough so that I could see white bone and torn muscle.

My dad grabbed my arm and he told me to run back to the house and to get Peter, run as fast as you can, James. And I turned and ran back through the long grass, which didn't soak my trousers because they were already wet. I reached the house and there was the man of the house and I asked him to get Peter because I didn't know whom Peter was.

The man of the house looked panicked and I started crying. He told me that he was Peter and asked me what was wrong. I tried to tell him but my throat was full of tears and choked with foaming vomit. So I just grabbed his hand and we ran together toward the scene. I climbed over the gate and he tried but couldn't. I yelled for him to hurry up, hurry up PETER, and headed off toward my dad and the injured horse. Back then, I didn't know what they did with horses that had broken legs. If I had then I wouldn't have ran so fast.

An ambulance was rung for and a man called Jules, who was born in Austria but moved here because he wanted to be a vet solely based on watching All Creatures Great and Small, turned up. He was a vet but a vet with a special certificate my dad told me when Jules arrived. The vet was carrying a small black medical suitcase and a small, single barrelled gun of some sort.

The woman of the house cried when she saw that gun. Not the man that carried it, just the gun. I guess the gun signified the end of something she loved. When she was taken away in the ambulance she blew a kiss to the horse and told her husband – Peter – to make Jules do it quick and to hold the horse when it happens.

But that isn't the way of things when it comes to putting a horse out of its misery.

The man called Jules looked over the horse and shook his head and injected something into its neck and at once the great horse went silent as if it were asleep but its eyes remained open and stared up vacantly to the bright blue sky. I looked up and there was nothing to see but sky and even more sky after that and it scared me that even when you die there could be nothing to see.

There is nothing I can do, Jules said to Peter and Peter said, I understand, and that is when my dad held onto my shoulders and made me take a few steps back but he did not protect me from what was happening but asked instead, Do you want to go back to the van? You don't have to watch this.

I shook my head. I knew what was going to happen. Afterwards I wished I had said yes and had gone back to the van instead of saying no. My dad held me in place. I don't know if he was trying to comfort me or to hold me up.

Jules lifted the gun, placed it against the horse's temple and waited for Peter to nod to give his final approval.

Peter nodded and placed his hand upon the horse as his wife had instructed. Jules told him to remove it.

That's when the world stopped like it is stopped now, here in Jacobs's garden. Frozen, waiting for something to happen because we live in a world that demands cause and effect. The bees didn't buzz anymore and the crickets had stopped sawing. Trees and grass and leaves and the clouds didn't move in the breeze. Like now, like then, I am frozen, the world is on standby and I can see Jules pulling the trigger of the gun and hear that thud from the gun and it made my body jump and the horse jerked violently and then came to rest. A little trickle of blood ran from the horses head and everything was utterly still. Dead still.

Then the world started moving again and it was as if the horse had never had a seizure and reared and snapped both its legs and then was put to sleep. My dad and me went back to work and said nothing of what had happened. We built that summerhouse over a two-week period and I got half the money and half the praise. By the end of that summer, I didn't want to be a builder anymore and my dad was happy with that because its bastards work and he didn't want me to do it.

~

The world is moving on now. I hear the breeze moving the trees and there is a whiff of decay about me thanks to the Rag and Bone Man's place. It's clear to me what I need to do, what I need to say and put into motion. I believe in the world of cause and effect. Poppy is dying, the cause of a disease given to her by her mother thanks to a quirk in genetics. My cause is to save her. If Poppy dies then my cause is merely a by-product of the original cause. I am both the effect and cause rolled into one.

I say to Jacob:

"If I were to say 'no' then that doesn't make me any better than the disease killing Poppy. If I say 'no' I don't think I can live with it. To me that's like I'm killing her. I'm her dad; I'm the one that is meant to save her and stop her from being hurt and to keep her from harm. I have a chance to do that. If it fails then that's my problem and I guess I'll have to live with that too."

I look up to Jacob like I used to look up to my dad.

"Be careful with her. She is all I have."

Jacob nods and puts a hand on my shoulder but it doesn't feel right, he's not my dad, but I let him do it anyway.

~

Twenty minutes later I am walking back to my house and the houses I walk by are shut and quiet and nobody else knows of what just went on. I stroll past the place where I first saw Jacob and that too is quiet and speaks nothing of what went on there a few nights ago.

Jacob told me to go home. He had work to do. Things to prepare. Things I want to know but don't want to know. I left him my mobile number because his house phone still works, it didn't matter to the phone company that the man that had signed up for that line over half a century ago was now dead. Jacob would call me later with the details of what must be done and when it would be done. The details mattered to me, how and when and what was needed, the tools, the sterilisation, and so many other things that my head hurts thinking about it.

I walk past someone who says hello to me but I don't reply and I don't care who it was and just head for home.

When I arrive home, my house is still. I close the curtains and sit in the front room with my hands down by my side and my phone on my lap. And there I sit and try not to think of what I have just agreed to do but can't help myself and all I can see is Poppy lying on the floor instead of that horse and it's me stood over her replacing Jules. I don't have a gun, I have a scalpel.

My phone rings.

It's Jacob.

"Hello, Jacob."

"Hello, James. How are you?"

"I'm okay. You?"

"Still ticking."

"Was that supposed to be a joke?"

"I'm not sure. Why, was it funny?"

"Maybe another time, Jacob, not today. What do you need?"

"Just Poppy. I can take care of everything else."

"Just Poppy?"

"Yes. But I have to ask, what blood type is she?"

"Err, B, why?"

He is silent and I know why.

"Actually, don't answer that. When?"

"The day after tomorrow. If that's all right. We can't leave it too long."

"Why not? What's the rush?"

Jacob is silent and again I can guess why.

"Never mind, don't answer that."

"Are you going to tell your sister?"

I haven't really considered that. What would Karen say? It wouldn't be pretty I am sure of that. She would have none of it. But then again, when faced with the truth, with the reality of Poppy's impending death, Karen may act differently.

"James?"

"I'm still here. Just thinking. I guess not. No, I won't tell her. She will only complicate things. Either way, once it is done it's done and I shall have to live with it. I may have to share your secret though."

"That's okay. I have considered that. It doesn't matter who knows anymore. My mind is made up."

What he says strikes a chord with me but I can't put my finger on it. There is no emotion in his voice so it is hard to tell what Jacob is really thinking or what he really means.

"So," Jacob continues, "I shall see you at ten the day after tomorrow."

"Yes. Are you sure there is nothing you need?"

"No. Just Poppy and you. You with a clear mind and guilt free conscience, James, because once we have started there is no going back. You understand that?"

I don't really but I tell myself that I do. "Yes. I understand. See you later, Jacob."

"Bye, James."

And the phone line goes dead but I don't put the phone down for a few seconds because if I do I won't have anything to hold onto and I fear that with empty hands comes the need to drink and I don't want to be drunk.

Letting go of the phone I walk into the kitchen and open the cupboard that is above the dishwasher and I take out all the bottles of spirits that I have accumulated and pour them all down the sink. Even the special bottles and the old bottles and the sealed bottles I open and pour down there because I don't want it in my house anymore. I don't want it to be a part of me anymore.

The kitchen stinks of whiskey, of vodka, of gin, of rum and of red wine. It makes me feel lightheaded and close to puking. The smell reminds me of parties, then of Emily and how she would get tipsy and start to dance and sing. Christ that woman couldn't sing but I would stand there and watch her and love her even more than I did seconds before that.

I open the window that is above the sink but no air comes in and the stink is so much that I grab my keys and leave the house and go for a walk.

I walk past my car, the sound of my front door slamming still surrounding me, and from the boot, I take out the backpack Emily bought me. As I close the boot lid there is a waft of air and with it the smell of Emily's perfume comes and I inhale it deeply before locking the car and heading east; away from the setting sun and toward the sea.
La Mer

I call Karen and ask her what time she will be around in the morning to drop Poppy off. She tells me it will be early, before nine, as she has plans with her friend from work and then goes on about it but I don't listen. I don't want to talk to her and I suppose that is because I am hiding things and telling lies.

When I hang up the phone I am walking across the bridge over the railway lines and heading toward the allotments. The sun is hot on my neck and thanks to the backpack; my back is drenched with sweat.

Past the allotments and across the road Jacob took me down yesterday. I could go down there and still reach the beach. Instead, I keep on the side road only used by the council so that they can access the gravel pit and the salt piles and soon I am walking past them.

I can smell the sea ahead of me. The smell that cannot be described to those that do not live near the sea for it is full of many different smells; salt, mud, seaweed; fish both alive and dead, diesel, aviation fuel from the ferries and oil. I love the smell. It's real. It's there, like a mist that you cannot see, and it can never be taken away by an air freshener. Emily didn't like the smell and I don't know why. Maybe she was sick of it like you can get sick and tired of the same song if it is played over and over again even if it is one of your very best favourites. It doesn't matter now anyway.

Poppy likes the smell of the sea. She likes the sea, though is cautious of it and that comforts me. I taught her that the sea is a woman and women can be dangerous and that one day she will be dangerous. Dangerous like a witch, she asked me and I laughed and agreed and then told her that the French word for the sea 'La Mer' and now that is what Poppy calls it and will not be told otherwise; she is as stubborn as her mother when it comes to the stuff daddy tells her, for to her I am the truth and I tell no lies. We are Gods in our children's eyes. It's hard to live up to that sometimes but I try. That's the main thing I have learned, to try.

I can hear the sea. It must be high tide as I can hear the waves wash against the stones. The road I was walking along has now crumbled away into nothing more than a broken path and the salt and gravel piles have gone and there is nothing but sparse clumps of grass and bush poking out of the destroyed ground. Even as a child, this area existed and maybe it always will. Ahead, the path leads up a grassy mound and beyond that I see the tips of the sailing boats poking up like little fans. There are sea gulls flying and they sweep to and fro, some high and some low, whilst others are sat on the top of the grassy mound and when they hear me coming they cry out and fly into the air like pissed tramps sat on a park bench being moved on by the feared park warden.

I speed up and run up the hill and within a few steps I am atop it and can see the sea and I am sure that the sea sees me. I am good five feet above the beach and the grass mound, I am stood on follows the shoreline as far as I can see both north and south.

This part of the beach isn't for the tourists. It is for the locals; the dog walkers, the runners, the cyclists, the walkers and the plodders, the artists, the photographers and the bird watchers, the nature lovers and the planters and in the evenings, it's for the lovers and the young drinkers. It is a stony stretch of beach and full of sea weed and the water isn't blue its brown green because its muddy out there and the dredgers scoop it up because the gravel boats land a little further up and they need deep water or else they will beach.

I walk along the raised shoreline crushing buttercups and daisies beneath my feet and don't look out to the sea and to the sailing boats and fishing boats that bob up and down on the water.

The dredger is out there, heading south like me. The men on that boat are going home. Their boat is called Mavis, after the owner's wife, and his wife must hate that because the dredger is old and fat and cumbersome and not the sleek, crisp speed machine she would have probably preferred to be named after.

Once the dredger is out of sight, I spot the seat I like to sit on and its empty and so I sit down. I feel a little numb. I also feel hungry and thirsty. I look at my phone and it's nearly six and I don't know where the time goes anymore. From my backpack, I take out my sketchpad and the pack of pencils I brought with me. There is a bottle of water in there too and a chocolate bar and so I drink the bottle dry and inhale the chocolate.

I open the sketchpad and take out the sharpest pencil and sit there with the pencil poised, ready to go, all it needs is me. I am its master, the pencil my slave, and the paper belongs to both of us.

I close my eyes and just breathe softly.

I listen to the sea, try to catch what it has to say but it says nothing new to me. It tells me nothing I haven't heard before. But then again what could it tell me? It's just water and salt and weeds and fish and mud. It has no mouth or no mind. Its master is the moon and the spin of the earth.

My eyes are still closed as somebody and their dog walks past. Their world isn't like mine. They haven't been through what I have been through and haven't had to make the choices I have had to make.

Tough decisions.

Their lives are better than mine are and I open my eyes to prove that to myself and look at the man and his dog that just walked by. The man is old, really old, and he wobbles and shakes as he walks and one of his legs look too straight to be a real leg and he is missing his left arm all the way to the shoulder and his thin jacket hangs loosely there. Even his dog looks old and not long for this world and I start to think that maybe that guy actually does have it worse than me. Much worse by the looks of things. He has probably lost his wife, maybe most of his family and friends too, and will soon lose his dog. That arm and leg were taken in the war no doubt, the same war where his friends were probably shot to shit or blown to small pieces. He coughs and it's the same cough as the Rag and Bone Mans and even though he is meters away that cough doesn't sound too good and will no doubt be the death of him.

Maybe he has had it worse than me. But I bet my dad's hands were bigger than his dad's hands.

~

I can't draw. I put the pencil back in the case and then put that and the pad into the backpack and zip it up. There are long shadows on the sea, mine included, and across the stretch of sea, the land stars to twinkle with small lights, as there is life over there on that bit of beach. There used to be a small ferry that would cross this little bit of water, but no more. It went because it's easier to drive even though not all people drive. But there are busses now and taxis that don't charge the earth to get there so I guess for some it's easier, but it's not the same.

Leaving the seat, I walk down the beach and stop just above the tide line and watch the waves as they gently roll in. No white caps here, just folds of water cruising in. Sometimes the waves can be big here, but the wind has to be fast and in the right direction.

I can feel the cold stones under my trainers.

It's been a long time since I felt the cold of the beach on my feet and now seems a good time so I take off my trainers and place them on top of my backpack, which I have put on the floor. I remove my socks and put them inside my trainers and the stones are cold and wet but it feels good. I edge down toward the sea and my feet hurt a little but quickly they are in the water and the stones have gone and it's muddy beneath me. I look behind me and no one is there and I take my phone and wallet and keys out of my pockets and throw them onto the pile of my stuff. I keep walking out into the water and it's up to my knees and the water is cold. Really cold. But I like it. The water feels good; it surrounds me, comforts me, and holds me in place. I keep on going and now it has soaked through the bottom of my shorts but I keep on going walking into the sea with my head looking straight ahead. Just as the water tickles my balls and sends shocks of cold up through my spine and into my eyes and brain, I stop. My feet sink into the mud; I can feel the grit and the seashells digging in.

Maybe the sea does talk to me. Its voice seems to pull at me and that voice is womanly but the words I cannot make out because she is speaking in French. Her hands are soft and comforting. The way back seems shut to me and so the only way is forward.

I walk forward.

The water is at waist level, then above my belly button, and I don't gasp from the cold nor try and I don't stop myself because this now seems right.

Soon I am up to my neck and I take in a big gulp of air and sink down beneath the salty water and I am the sea and the sea is me but I don't see the sea because I have my eyes closed but the sea does see me and it knows me for what I am and it understands what I am about to do and that voice tells me it's okay to do what I am going to do and that if it all goes wrong that she is here, La Mer will always be here to take me away from it all and to hide me from the judgemental pricks that don't understand why I did it.

~

When I open my eyes, I am out of the water and stood over my belongings and I am soaked through to the bone. I walk home wet and people stare and cross the street to avoid the stinking wet man. When I reach the bridge that goes over the railway I spy a train heading this way so I stop and wave and the train driver waves back and toots his horn and I raise my thumb to say thank you. I do these things because I don't care anymore. I do these things because these may well be my last days.

~

I get home and take a shower and then order a curry. I start to fall asleep on the sofa and make an effort to go to bed. It's not long before I fall asleep and don't mind when I wake up in the middle of the night and Emily's side is cold because I realise that she is always with me and will always be with me as long as I remember her.

The bed may be cold but I can always see her lying there whenever I want to.
Poppy

I wake up to the sounds of birds singing. With my eyes closed, I hear the house stretch as it warms. Just using my senses I can tell that it is early, probably six or maybe just turned half past. I still feel a tad dirty from last night's escapades so when I get out of bed I walk along the hallway and turn on the shower. I take a leak, remove my pants but I don't need to test the water because the steam from it is already rising. Thoughts of Emily start to creep up on me as I wash. I will never be able to escape those memories, I understand that now, but I can control them, and there is no need to fear them or have a necessity to feel sorry for myself when I do let them into my conscious.

Right now the memory is of the morning after our first night in this house and I let it in and play it out and it feels good too because I can see Emily's face as clear as if she were with me in the shower as she was on that morning.

~

Dressed and ready for the day.

Sat in the kitchen I have breakfast prepared for Poppy and am waiting for the door to open.

At just after eight, I hear the door unlock and tiny feet run through the house and as I turn from the kitchen into the hallway, I am met with open arms and twitching fingers and Poppy screams "Up! Up!" as I go to cuddle her. As I lift her up and she wraps her arms around me and mine wrap around hers I can smell her hair and her freshly washed clothes and I take it all in with deep breaths with my eyes closed. We are silent in each other's grip but then I whisper that I missed her and she tells me that she missed me too and I am filled with an emotion and a feeling that cannot be described by normal words it so terrifically complex.

When I open my eyes Karen is stood by the open front door, Poppy's little backpack and suitcase are by her feet a few feet into the house. Karen is already closing the door when she says:

"Can't hang around, got to go. Love you, Poppy. Call you later, okay?"

"Love you Aunty Karen!" Poppy bellows far too loudly but I don't care she is only six and she is excited. I nod and smile at my sister and mouth thank you and to me the words mean so much more than it does to her and Karen freezes for just a second and perhaps she does know what it really means.

Then the door is closed and she is gone and it's just me and my daughter like it has been for over a year.

"Did you have a good time with Aunty Karen?" I say as I put her down.

"Yep." Big eyes look up at me and her face is so slender and pure and she knows only what is told to her. "What are we doing today?"

"Well," I say standing up and folding my arms and scrunching my face so to her it looks as though I am deep thought. "That's up to you. I thought we could take a walk and see the squirrels, then maybe the park and some ice cream and perhaps, if you are really good, I mean; really good, we could go to the toy shop and see what Daddy's magic card can get."

She is silent for a moment. Her little reasoning machines are whirring but I can't make them out like I can with Jacobs.

Something catches her eye and she looks past me.

"What's in the garden, Daddy?"

"Eh? Oh yeah. I forgot. Come take a look."

I instinctively put out my hand and she holds it, which is a comfort and a joy to both of us. If all goes well I shall miss holding her hand because soon she will be all grown up and holding your dads hand isn't something that bigger kids do. I know, I once was one.

We walk into the dining room and Poppy is slightly in front of me and I can feel my heart beat a little faster.

"What's happened to the garden?" And Poppy looks up at me and then back to the new garden that when she left was a grey slab of nothing but now is a magical place full of many colours. Even I'm taken aback looking at my new garden, which Jacob helped me create.

"The fairies came. The rose fairies, Poppy. They saw how much you liked them in your park so they visited us the other day and did this for you."

"Wow." She lets go of my hands and stands by the door and looks out with her hands behind her back and her head looks left and right and her long hair sways behind her.

"I wish I could have seen them." She sounds sad and so I walk forward and put my hand on her head and stroke her soft hair, "It's okay. They asked after you and I told them that you were having excessively much fun with your Aunty Karen and they understood and they told me that because you have a special rose garden now they can visit you. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Well cool." And that is another sign that not only that she is growing up but that there is still a mystery, a fantasy, to everything.

"Daddy, I can see a fairy. Two of them. No three! Over there, over there." And she runs out of the room and into the hallway. There is a sound of a bag opening and a fumbling and then chaotic steps. "Open the door please." She yells from the hallway and as I do this she comes bounding in and she is carrying two of her dollies and there is such a delight on her face as she jumps into the garden and loses herself in the path ways and the tunnels between the bushes that I am overwhelmed by it so much that I yearn to be a part of her imagination.

I take a seat and watch her while she plays with her dollies and the fairies that she can see but I can't and who am I to say that those fairies aren't there just because I don't see them? Poppy is lost in a world that adults cannot be a part of and maybe if we were then that fantasy world would scare us because there are no boundaries, no physical bonds, no laws or clear paths and everything is changeable. A child's mind seems to thrive on its own internal chaos but can quickly turn that chaos into order when faced with obstacles.

As she continues to play, I do not disturb her. I let her do what she wants and try to take it all in. So much of what we see is lost. Sometimes those lost thoughts come back to us, usually at a moment in our lives when we need them the least. Emily would have loved this garden. Why didn't I do this for her? Why did I always find something else to do, why did I never have the time do to it? What the hell was I doing for all those years?

It is as if I knew for many years she was going to die and so resigned myself to the fact that there was no point in doing anything. But I did not know that and I am not like my father. He would have done something because he was never idle. Even on his deathbed, he made plans and talked them over with me and my mum and my sister. We tried to tell him that it was no good thinking of such things, that his days working were done because the stroke had taken away his right side and his lungs were failing. But he had none of it until that thing he wanted none of took him and left nothing but a greying façade of a man lying on a hospital bed.

~

And my guard is down as I watch Poppy play and thinking of my father's last day. And because my guard is down and thinking of last days my brain decides now would be a good time to remind me of the day that Emily died. But I welcome it because Karen is right; it is time to move on and it is okay to let it go and to move on we have to face our thoughts head on and not let them stagnate and rot our minds.

~

The day that a significant part of my world went away was a Thursday. It was the morning after a torrid night of tears and of doctors and of hard truths and harsh realisations. I was on my own in that sterile place where nurses ran about and Doctors strolled around and machines bleeped sometimes slow and then sometimes fast and when they beeped fast the nurses moved even quicker but the Doctors didn't, they merely floated from person to person jotting down notes and clicking their pens with an authority that sickened me.

Emily was in a room of her own surrounded by machines that seemed to do nothing but mock us with the mechanical life they fed down their tubes into her decaying system. Emily had a room of her own because death is a private matter and grief even more so. Emily had contracted a viral infection that had taken a tight grip on her lungs before turning north and spreading its vile efficient self until it reached her heart, which was already weak with the disease. Much like an HIV sufferer, it isn't that which kills them, it is something mundane and treatable. So the heart disease didn't kill Emily, a cold did the duty for it, and she lay in bed with tubes coming out of her arms and monitors strapped to her chest and head and she was as grey as my dad had been during his last hours.

She looked so weak, so feeble, and her hair was wet and tangled and stuck to her once pretty face that was now sunk and looked pitiful. But I didn't really see that. What I saw was my wife, the mother of my child, and the woman that I loved beyond any measure. I saw the woman that had saved me from myself and had made it so that she would go on saving me because she would always be with me, not only in memory but in also leaving me with Poppy whom is everything that is good in both of us merged into one sweet person. To me she looked as she did the day I married her and her skin was as soft as it was the first time I touched it with trembling fingers because to me back then she was an angel and to touch something as fragile as an angel could be as to break it.

On that bed, she was only thin grey skin wrapped around a box of pain.

I remember she mumbled my name and asked for water. I lifted her head and she felt so light I thought she could float away if the windows were open. Her dry lips parted and she took a sip but that was all she could manage and she flopped back to the bed and as she breathed out, I could smell the virus that was taking her away from me.

"I don't know what to do." I said to her and Emily twitched her hand and I held it and scraped the chair across the floor and placed my forehead against her hand and she was cold, too cold.

"Don't go." I said but did not look up to her. "You saved me that day in the cemetery. You, Emily. You were there and were always there for me. But I can't save you when you need me to. The only time you need me I can't do a fucking thing and I'm so sorry, Emily. I'm so sorry for not being able to stop this, for taking you away from Poppy."

Emily took in some deep breaths, each one seemingly taking all of her strength to complete. Her hand-gripped mine tighter. She said my name and so I looked up.

"I love you, James. Go on being a great dad to Poppy. Don't stop. Do whatever you can to save her. That is how you save me, by saving her. Tell her Mummy loves her forever..." and she coughed hard and her body shook and trembled and I took both of her hands in mine.

"I will." I said.

But Emily didn't answer back. Her machines beeped and buzzed furiously until two nurses came running in and stopped them from beeping and buzzing and then tried to resuscitate her. That was the worst part for me. Right then. How they treated her. She was finally at rest and gone was the pain but they wanted to bring her back to it. Through my tears I was asking them to stop but they were just like the machines that had been keeping Emily alive and they ignored me because they had a duty to perform. I may as well not have been there.

The funeral was no different. I was ignored throughout most of the day though that was mostly my own fault. Poppy was not there, she was at school and then stayed the night with a family we trust and have known for some time. As wrong as it would have been I would have liked Poppy there with me so that someone would have spoken to me or held my hand or cuddled me when I needed it. Perhaps that's selfish of me, I was not the only one that day who had lost someone they loved. Her mother and father were still alive and so they were living the nightmare all parents have. Her sister, who did not look at me the whole day, had lost not only a sibling but also her closest friend.

On that day, all of that was lost on me. She was mine, no one else's. She was my wife and she was dead and had died far too young and now I was left alone whilst all the others had someone to be with.

I closed my eyes when the coffin was pulled behind the curtain and out of sight and wept when they played 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins. A song that was not written for her but she thought was.

Afterward, whilst the congregation looked at the flowers and tears were shed and memories shared and heads hung low and the Priest did his rounds, I found myself sat on a wooden bench staring at nothing but looking at the garden of remembrance where small wooden crosses stood to remember the dead. I sat there wanting to be noticed but at the same time to be left alone. One of Emily's friends approached me, saw my pathetic needy face and turned back and pretended to answer her phone. Then one of my friends came to me, knelt down and asked how I was doing, to which I answered, okay, thank you for coming, and then he was off. Five more people came and asked the same question, how are you doing?

How are you doing?

How are you doing?

How are you doing?

How are you doing? And four times I gave the same generic answer, okay, thank you for coming, but on the fifth time something deep inside me, that to me was like a rubber band made of stress, was finally pulled that little bit too tight and it finally snapped and when it did I looked up to the two miserable faces in front of me and I thought how stupid and pathetic they looked and asked myself what are they so sad for, and when I didn't answer them they asked me it again, how are you doing? And this time I answered,

"How am I doing? How am I doing? Not so very fucking well, that's how I am doing. How the hell do you think I would be doing considering my wife has just fucking died. You tell me hey, you tell me how to feel you fucking morons."

To me my voice wasn't raised but everyone turned and Emily's Aunt and Uncle, who had asked me how I was doing for the fifth and sixth time, looked shocked and appalled beyond all possible measure and they backed away as if they had been shot at close range and they waddled back to the crowd of people shaking their heads and wiping tears from their eyes. And those people whispered in hushed astonishment and Karen looked at me but didn't come over because she knew to leave me well alone. Sadly, someone else did not know to leave me alone.

I wanted a drink and felt inside my suit jacket for the opening to the pocket and when I found it, I reached inside and pulled out the small hip flask, which was filled with bourbon. I undid the small cap harder than what was required and took three violent, sour tasting swigs from the small black container. When I went to take a fourth, I felt a hand place itself on mine and stop me. I turned and saw that it was the Priest that had stopped me and he was wearing a look of both sorrow and wisdom. I hated, and still hate, that look.

That's not the answer, he said to me and tried to lower my arm but I wouldn't let him and we stared into each other's eyes trying to suss out one another like cowboys in a spaghetti western prior to the count of ten. What is then? I whispered for fear of losing it further. The Priest said, Honesty with yourself, with others, and an acceptance of their sorrow so that you can share yours and be rid of all forms of corruption and they rid of theirs. That cannot be found in drink. Trust me, you won't find any help in there.

And I knew he was right but that didn't matter to me then as much as it does now and so I pushed his hand away and lifted the flask to my lips and drank it dry and looked at him in the eyes as I did and he stared right back at me until I was done. He looked at me as if I were the stupidest man on Earth. And when I was done, lowering the flask slowly like some all-conquering hero, he closed his eyes and perhaps said a silent prayer for me.

As I did up the bottle, I belched within my throat and felt the sick rise. He shook his head, looked to the distant crowd who were still watching the scene unfold. He lowered his head and turned back to me and when he faced me he looked at me with just sorrow in his eyes and he said softly, Think of your daughter, James. Think of Poppy.

Those words hit me like a tidal wave but I did not take them to be comforting, thought provoking, or ones said to rip me away from a path he had seen many times, but instead took them to be threatening for I was fearing Poppy being taken away from me, the Courts had already been in contact. Breathing became short and sharp. I took a step forward, closing the gap between us so that our noses were almost touching. I let go of the flask and let it fall to the floor. I clenched my fists and let them hang to the sides and I saw that look of sorrow turn to one of fear and that fuelled me further. Fuelled with that and with the bourbon I leaned in a little, smiled and simply said, Go fuck yourself, you cunt, and then walked home to be alone in my misery.

Two months later, when I had finally plucked up enough courage to do so, I went back to the Crematorium to say sorry to the Priest.

My apology was not accepted by him, not because he wouldn't accept it, but because graves cannot accept anything but a dead body.

~

Poppy plays in the garden until it is lunchtime and I make her and myself some lunch and we eat it together, sat on the large green picnic blanket in the middle of our garden. Usually Poppy doesn't take too kindly to the bees but today she allows them to buzz around her and seems to take great pleasure in watching them land on the petals and cover themselves in pollen. We drink ice-cold fizzy lemonade, which made us both burp, and we laugh until it isn't funny anymore.

She is so much like her mother and nothing like me. Karen says that isn't true, that she has some of my traits, but I am blind to them and can only see Emily reflected in what Poppy does and just to highlight that, Poppy flicks her long hair back and tucks a strand behind her ear just like Emily used to do. Even her eyes seem to examine the world like her mother's used to, pausing on each object, understanding it, knowing it, and then moving onto the next. Under the hot sun, we eat and drink until we are both full and then I lay down and stretch out and cross my arms under my head. There is nothing to look at in the sky but I look up there anyway. Poppy gets to her feet, looks at me with those wide eyes, smiles, and then lies down next to me.

She says: "Are you going to sleep?"

"No." I say lazily, but the thought is crossing my mind.

"Did you help the fairies, Daddy?"

"A little bit. But they did most of the work."

"Oh." and she puts her dolly on my chest and starts to play a little, gently, like she does at night before bed. My chest rises and falls evenly and I feel tired, exhausted. I could fall asleep right now but I don't want to waste the day. I open my eyes and Poppy is looking up and I notice that a few strands of her hair are covering her face so I flick them aside.

"Do you think Mummy saw the fairies?"

I nod and fear answering. "Of course she did. Mummy sees us all the time. I bet she speaks to all the fairies; Tooth Fairy, Sleepy Fairies, Tickle fairies, even Santa and the Easter Bunny, I bet. They all know you and know how good you are."

Poppy doesn't frown or question me because to her I am always right and I know everything. She places her hand on my chest and puts the dolly on the floor. A little bee investigates the dolly but isn't interested and Poppy watches the bee fly awkwardly away.

"Can we play all day in the garden?"

"You don't want to go out? Don't want to feed the squirrels or have an ice cream or go to the toy shop?"

She shakes her head and looks at me as if she knows that this may well be her last day to play and she wants to play in the place she knows the best.

"Stay and play." She says stubbornly but with a little cheeky grin.

"Okay."

"But you play too."

And most days that fills me with dread because there is only a finite amount of times a game can be played and dolls played with before it gets tedious. But not today. Today I want to play.

~

The evening comes and in the distance, the sky starts to turn a pale orange as the light from the sun reflects off of the dust and the smog. The city is falling into silence, work places are shutting down, vehicles make their way through the arteries of the city and the streets are filled with children playing.

Poppy is quiet and sits on the sofa with her feet curled up and clasping her favourite dolly watching her favourite cartoons whilst I potter about cleaning and doing the things that parents do to pass the time. I have done well today not to think of what will be happening tomorrow but now that time is close I can feel its weight, its breath, dripping all over me. I doubt I will sleep tonight.

When I can think of nothing more to do and the house is as clean as it can be when a child is thrown into the mix I sit with Poppy and put my arm around her. She snuggles into me, puts her head on my chest and I can feel her weight pressing against me as she relaxes. There are countless nights spent like this in my thoughts and I see them all now flashing in front of me and in each one Poppy grows and becomes the girl she is today.

But what girl will she become after tomorrow?

Another cartoon starts and this one signals to Poppy that soon will be bedtime.

"You can stay up late if you want?"

"Okay." Poppy says though her voice is sleepy and I know that at the end of the show she will ask to go to bed and for a story and as much as I want her to stay awake with me and be with me even though we don't say anything or do anything I can't make her stay awake.

And when the show ends, she looks at me, her eyes puffy, and she looks so fragile, so absolutely tired it is scary. "Can I go to bed now?"

And it hurts to say yes but what choice do I have? I carry her up to bed, it's been a long day and I have to sit her on the toilet and we skip brushing our teeth together.

"Have you had a good day?"

"Yes."

I sit her on the bed and it is a struggle to put on her nightie and it is as if I am dressing one of her dollies.

"What was your favourite bit?"

"The garden. I love it."

"Thought you would." Now changed she flops onto the bed and drags the sheet up over her and instantly closes her eyes. There will be no story tonight, no sing along or a sneaky play. This was how it was for Emily when the end started to come.

With her eyes still closed Poppy says, "If I ask them something will the fairies hear me?"

I place my hand on her side and rub her back through the thin sheet. "Of course they will. What are you going to ask them?"

"It's a secret. I'm going to ask them in my dreams tonight."

I lean over and give her a little kiss on the cheek.

"Well, you have a good night's sleep and I shall see you in the morning."

Poppy doesn't answer

I sit on the end of her bed and watch her sleep. Behind her eyelids, her eyes move slowly from left to right and her hand opens and closes as if she is holding onto something. Maybe it is a fairies hand she is holding onto, maybe it is her mummy's hand, I will never know or even want to know if it came to it. If it is her mummy's hand I will be jealous of that, why doesn't she visit me and hold my hand?

Outside of her dreamland, I stand and the floorboards creak as I leave the room and the room becomes dark except for the little night light by her bed as I turn off the main light and head into the hallway, which is bright and cool.

Just as I decide to go into my own bedroom and change into my jogging bottoms the letterbox flaps and something heavy lands on the porch floor.

~

There is a plastic water bottle and a note attached to it. The water bottle is filled with a pinkish liquid. The liquid looks like heavily diluted fruit juice. My name is typed onto the note and when I open it, there are only a handful of words:

"Nil by mouth. Poppy must have the juice for breakfast."

I fold the note back up and put it in my back pocket and then think about it and so I take the note back out and scrunch it up into a tight ball. I stare at the bottle as I am doing all this and consider what I will say to Poppy in the morning when she is demanding her breakfast. There will be trouble, of that I am sure.

I pick the bottle up, undo the lid and take a sniff. It smells sweet and sugary but there is something metallic about it and it leaves an aftertaste that reminds me of clean dishes and mouthwash. I walk into the kitchen and put the bottle into the fridge next to the milk and against the white milk; the juice looks a little stronger. The light of the fridge is all that is illuminating the kitchen and when I close the door the kitchen falls dark and only small shafts of sunlight shine through the small window that hangs over the sink.

The kitchen clock tells me its 08:15 and I see the minute digit change and that's the first time I have seen that clock do that. Outside the sky darkens and the moon pokes up over the horizon. He is grey and bright tonight, not full, but almost there, and I can see his face and make out the craters that dot the landscape like pimples.

After watering the garden and standing in the cool air waiting for something to happen I go back into the house and make sure all the doors are locked and then I go to bed as I feel it is getting late and tomorrow is going to be a hard day. Sounds like an understatement, but what other way is there to describe it?

~

Lying in bed, the ceiling fan breathing its cooling breath on my skin I can feel myself drifting off. This day is coming to an end and my body is naturally reacting to that. And then I think of Jacob, to thoughts of what he up to right now? I try to shake them and to go to sleep but I can't. The urge to see him is like an itch that can't be scratched and so I fling the duvet off me and head up to the attic. I leave the lights off, I don't want him to see me and I peek out of the attic window down to his garden. The shed light is off. There is no blue glow coming from under the door. The house is dark apart from the top window, which in my house is the room that Poppy sleeps, but in his, I have no idea. The light is on but I cannot see what is going on in there as the curtains are drawn and everything about that house looks normal now, it doesn't stand out any more as it had on nights previous to this one. But he is in there. I can see his shadow moving around the room.

Comforted, I make my way back to bed and lay there looking up at the ceiling watching the ceiling fan spin.

I sleep.
Pink Blanket

Morning, the day of either ends or beginnings, I suppose.

Outside isn't bright and sunny, instead it is grey and murky but the heat hasn't gone and I can feel that there is a storm coming. It's bubbling in the distance like my stomach.

I look at my phone and see that it is 07:35. I don't move and listen to see if Poppy is awake yet but I can't hear anything apart from the white noise of my thoughts. I roll back over and let my body gradually wake. I dreamt last night but of what I do not know. Probably of Emily, I always seem to dream of her, more now than I did when she was right next to me; a living dream.

I must have fallen back asleep as the next thing I know Poppy is jumping on the bed and she is full of life and is the polar opposite of last night.

"Good morning, Daddy." She yells at me and before I can answer she shimmies herself off the bed and heads back out into the hallway and back into her own room.

"Good morning." Even though she isn't there and I pull myself out of bed and sit on the edge of the mattress and wipe the sleep from my eyes. Wiping them, a thought comes to me. One that hasn't really occurred to me; what would Emily have done if the choice had been hers and it was me that was dead? Would she have made the same choice as me? Would Emily have allowed a man she barely knew to operate on her little girl in a low odds attempt at saving her life?

We were together for many years. Most of our adult life. I should know her, shouldn't I? Her thoughts, her actions, her logic, they should be as much a part of me as my own thought processes. But I guess this is different. This isn't to decide on what school Poppy should go to, or what specialist she should visit. Perhaps I am alone in what I chose. But surely not. Which parent in their right mind wouldn't do the same if faced with what I am faced with?

I dwell on all this and more as I put up with Poppy's moans about her pink liquid breakfast and then the moaning goes on as she dresses herself and I ready an overnight bag for us both.

She questions me on what I am doing and where we are going but I do not tell her which seems to infuriate her more. There is a tension in the house and we both feel it and act accordingly around each other and this isn't how I pictured today would go so I get more and more frustrated and slam clothes into the overnight bag and when it is packed I hurl it onto the bed.

I hear Poppy walk into the hallway. Breathing heavy I turn and in an instant all my frustrations are gone because there, stood in the hallway, is my little Poppy and she is wearing a frilly white dress which goes down to her slim ankles. Slid into her hair is her favourite blue headband and she is smiling at me so I smile back. And when she sees my smile, she pokes her tongue out. Why can't all arguments and tense situations and miss-understandings be sorted out like that?

"Sorry." I say to her and she runs up to me and wraps her bare arms around my legs and she says sorry back and that is that.

We head downstairs, Poppy following me, I can feel her happiness like a pulse of heat hitting my back. We go into the front room, she sits on the floor and starts to read the book she has with her having no idea what is about to happen.

As I leave the room to put some of her favourite snacks into our bag she says, "Are we going on an adventure, Daddy?"

"Yep, a big one. With one of Daddy's friends."

"Who's that?"

I lean up against the doorframe. "His name is Jacob. He lives around the corner. His house is behind ours."

"Oh. Does he have roses in his garden?"

I chuckle, "No. Only you have such a special garden."

"I thought so." And Poppy flicks the page and laughs at the picture of a man wearing a silly hat who is spraying himself with water and it is a joke that I don't get and she won't in years to come.

I get things ready and I feel some sick start to make its way up into my throat and have to swallow hard to keep it down.

~

Poppy insists on taking her small backpack and fills it with little toys and her colouring book and pencils. A year ago, I would have had to carry that but now she carries it and loops it over her shoulders and waits by the front door impatiently. She has no clue what is going to happen. Not one of her thoughts is about dying, about not being here tomorrow or that this might be the last time, we see each other. Those are just my thoughts and they are not thoughts that any child should have, or parent for that matter.

"Come on then."

"Yay."

I open the front door and we go outside into the hot, humid air.

We hold hands and I take a look at the house as this may be the last time that I see it, Poppy just looks ahead and is skipping as she goes. And now it hits me as being wrong at what Jacob and me are about to do. That's a good thing I suppose, because in a way it is wrong what we are doing, isn't it?

~

"That house smells funny." Poppy says as we walk past the Rag and Bone man's house.

"Yeah, I know."

"Why does it smell?"

"Loads of reasons. Full of rubbish and rotten food. Dirty." And I look and see that the Rag and Bone man isn't there and am relieved.

"Here we are." I open the gate to Jacobs's house.

"Is this it?" Poppy says with a little hint of sadness in her voice and I suspect she thought the adventure to Jacobs's house was going to take longer.

"Yep." And as she walks in I close the gate and hear the front door open and Poppy clings to my leg and holds up her hand for me to hold.

I nod at Jacob and reach down and pick Poppy up and kiss her on the cheek to let her know everything is going to be okay even though I don't know if everything is going to be okay.

"Good morning, James. Hello Poppy. It's nice to finally meet you."

"Hi Jacob."

"Hello." Poppy says and she shrinks into me a little bit when we reach the doorway. She has always been a little bit shy, especially around men, so this is nothing new to me.

Jacob takes the small travel bag I brought with me.

"Come on in." He says and I put Poppy down as the teacher said in her school it best to let the child go in on their own and not force them into it. A few seconds tick by and all three of us are stood there. Jacob looks at me and I look at him and secretly at Poppy to see what she is doing. Her little fingers are twisting the strands of her hair that have fallen down by her ears, I can sense her nervousness.

"Poppy, some fairies left something for you in the garden." Jacob says and he looks down at her and right then I know that he isn't all machine and wires and cables and cogs. He is a man too, a man with instincts and feelings.

"For me?" Poppy says to him and holds my hand tighter.

"Yes. All for you."

"Wow. That's cool." I say and Poppy glances up at me and the nervous little girl has gone and now she is excited and curious like the monkey cartoon she watches before bed.

"Can we go in, Daddy?"

"Only if you want to."

And she answers by holding my hand tighter and tries to pull me through the front door. Jacob sees this and heads down the hallway and to my surprise Poppy lets go of my hand and follows him through his house. I close the door and walk a little faster and just catch her running through the back room and into the garden where her surprises from the fairies sit.

"Well played, James. Where did that come from?"

He is watching her, fascinated from what I can tell. "Just seemed like the right thing to do. I remember what it was like to be a child. I also remember how easily it is to be distracted at that age. Distractions are what it is all about with children."

"Guess so."

The room falls silent and together we watch Poppy remove the pink bows from the toy babies and begin to play with them. Her backpack sticks up like a tortoise shell but she seems not to care and all the fear and shyness she was feeling at the front door is gone. Awkwardly she takes off the back pack and takes out all the little bits to go with her babies; the spare clothes, the bibs, the bottles, the spoons, the bowls and the fake food, it's all there and makes her world that little bit more complete.

~

"This doesn't feel right."

"It shouldn't."

"Well that's not very helpful."

"James," he looks at me and me at him and he must see the worry I have etched on my face, "I'm not going to tell you that everything is going to be okay. I don't know that, no one does, and if they say that they do then they are liars. All I can tell you is that I will do all I can to save her and hopefully that will be enough."

I turn back to Poppy and she is still playing happily, oblivious to all that is going on around her and inside of her. "Suppose so. Guess it's just that I became accustomed to those types of things back when Emily was ill. Doctors would tell you that it would be okay even though they knew it wouldn't. But I took that small piece of comfort and blew it out of all proportions and hung on to it like an idiot. I'm just scared and feel guilty and just... I don't know what to think, I just want her to be better."

"And you are right to be scared. There is nothing I can say to you that will put your mind at rest. Perhaps if you go upstairs into the main bedroom that will help."

"What's up there?"

"You'll see. Go on up, I'll take care of Poppy."

I go over to Poppy and kneel down next to her. "I'm just going upstairs to the toilet. Be five minutes, okay. Uncle Jacob will be right there, I won't be long."

"Okay." She says and barely notices that I am even there.

Inside his house, it is warm and feels claustrophobic. The walls are covered in garish patterned wallpaper and it looks as if they are closing in on me as I walk through the hallway and then turn and head up the stairs. They creak and groan like mine.

All the doors are open up here and there is a room ahead of me, which is Poppy's room in my house, but in Jacob's house, it is just a room full of boxes and books and magazines. The room to my immediate right is the bathroom and next to that is the second bedroom. This room was once slept in, lived in, and there is an old metal framed bed still covered in its covers and atop them is a moth eaten blanket. In the corner of the room is a wardrobe and walking past I smell dusty dry stale air and I can feel a sneeze brewing.

At the end of the hallway is the main bedroom and already I can see that this room is unlike no other room in the house. It is bright and painted white and the door looks as if it is made of plastic and the light pours out of the room and even though it isn't sunny I have to squint as I get closer. Once in the room I am struck by the smell of bleach and of strong soap. There are medical machines all around the room and they encircle a large bed that looks ready to accept its patient. I instantly picture Poppy lying on that bed and it dwarves her it is so large and she so small compared to it. There are cables and tubes and sealed boxes containing medical tools I don't want to look at. There are oxygen canisters and small facemasks and in the corner there is a fridge with a little green flashing light in the top corner. Everything in this room looks new but it should not be here. It should be in a hospital somewhere and it should be attached to someone else. I put my hand on the bed just to make sure it is all real and not some trick and the bed sheet is warm and I can sense the plastic sheet below the cotton one with the tips of my fingers. Everything in this room, from what looks like a machine to monitor Poppy's condition to one that looks like a defibrillator, has a purpose and that purpose is to keep Poppy alive when what is being done to her would surely kill her.

Sick rises up in my gut and I put my hand on my belly to still it. But it does no good, so I put it back at my side and I think that perhaps I should feel sick, that I should feel ill for what I am allowing.

I leave the room and go downstairs and find Jacob stood in the same position behind a dining chair and he is holding onto it with both hands. Poppy is still playing in the garden.

"What do you think?" Jacob asks me as I enter the room.

"Makes me feel a little sick to be honest. Makes it feel more real if that makes any sense."

He is silent and I feel the need to go on, as I don't want it to be quiet; it's been too quiet in my life recently, "Where'd all that come from?"

"You don't need to know. They won't miss it though, that's for sure." Jacobs's voice is so flat and low and I know him so well that I won't ask any more about it. I hear his mechanical noises.

"Will she tick like you?"

"Yes. But not as loud, I hope. Have you thought about what to tell your sister? The Doctors?"

I shake my head. "No. Just deal with that when it happens. It will all be done and dusted by then and easier to deal with I should think. I won't tell them who did it if that is what you are worried about."

"I'm not worried."

"I know. I didn't mean it like that." I put my hand on his shoulder even though this man has no use of being comforted by words or by silly little actions such as this. But I do it anyway.

"Thank you, Jacob. Really, no matter what happens, thank you for doing this. You know, maybe this is wrong, what we are doing, maybe I've gone crazy and got selfish because I don't want to lose her, I don't know. She is going to die anyway, isn't she? So us doing this is the right thing to do, right? Tell me it's the right thing to do. Even if you don't want to, just tell me. Please, before I go crazy."

But he doesn't. He just stands there looking at Poppy. Watching her playing as I watch him doing whatever it is that he is doing and hating him a little bit for being what he is and not giving me the comfort I so desperately want.

"I'm sorry." Jacob says to me and I am sure I can hear sympathy in his voice but it might all be my imagination and I just add it to the pile of stuff I will never know about this person, this machine; this clockwork man.

~

"I have to start now." Jacob says to me.

I take my hands off the chair and put them both in my pockets.

"What do I need to do?"

"Just pick her up and hold her like you do when she is poorly."

"Okay."

I call her name and walk over to her and she looks up at me. I feel weak, pathetic. I am a liar, a coward and a hero and a father and a bastard and savour all at once.

"Do we have to go now?" she asks me, "I haven't finished playing. It their dinner time." And she looks at her dollies and then points one at me and I look at that dolly and see the same lifeless eyes I see when I look at Jacob.

"Daddy just wants a cuddle that's all."

"Okay." She sounds like me when I say that. She stands and put her arms up and I take hold of her and she is heavy, heavier than I remember. I lift her up and squeeze her tight into me so that her head rests on my shoulder and her legs wrap around my belly. Her little trainers bounce against my backside. She lets me squeeze her and she wraps her arms around my neck and I am sure I hear a little giggle.

Before I close my eyes, I see Jacob walking towards us and he is carrying a syringe tipped with a dripping needle.

"I love you so much, Poppy. Mummy loves you too. "

"Love you too, Daddy. Love you the mostest." And she winces a little, not too much, but enough so that I know what just happened and by the time I tell her that I love her the very mostest I feel her head slump against my shoulder and when I open my eyes she is asleep and Jacobs syringe is empty.

Her dolly falls to the floor and I hate what I have done.

~

I carry her upstairs and feel as if I am floating.

I place her on the bed and wipe the hair away from her face and she is still warm and I can feel her breath on my arm. There is no movement behind her closed eyes. Her breathing is soft and rhythmic.

From under the bed Jacob takes out a small pink blanket. "Just to keep her little legs warm."

But I'm not really listening.

"You need to get her undressed."

I look at him and then look out into the hallway. He nods and leaves the room and I hear him start to wash his hands.

As I undress Poppy, her little body offering no resistance, I speak to her softly, as if I were putting her to bed. I tell her of all the things we shall do when she is better. All the presents she will have and all the ice cream she can eat. I promise her that she will be okay, that nothing bad will happen. She may be able to see Mummy in her dreams right now, perhaps Mummy is there with you, hold her hand, I tell her, give her a cuddle and think of all the fun there is to be had.

She is naked now except for her little bright orange pants and I keep them on her and cover her lower half in the pink blanket and put one of her dollies under their too. I hear the taps fall silent in the bathroom.

I hold onto her hand and kiss her on the forehead and then on her little lips and then on her soft pink cheeks which are getting paler with each passing breath. I smell her hair and then the skin on her arms and chest because I don't want to forget those smells.

My hair sticks to my forehead. I can feel the colour draining from me as it does when I get the flu or a stomach bug. My back aches from being leant over for so long. God do I feel so in human right now. Feelings that can't be described surge through me, I panic, I dodge the truth and I am nothing but scum. But this needs to happen. She will die without it.

I run my clammy hands through her hair like I used to when she was a baby and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as I do and as I do I try and fight the tears and the sickness that is welling up in me like a storm.

Jacob is back in the room and he stinks of soap. He has removed his normal clothes and is wearing a set of blue scrubs.

"Can I stay with her?"

"It's best you don't."

"Okay." And something stabs me in the chest and twists its blade deeper and deeper and I look down but nothing is there even though I can feel it.

"But how will you..."

"I have it under control. If I need you I will shout."

I rub her hand and don't want to let go even if she isn't holding mine back.

"How long will it be?"

"I don't know. Six hours. Maybe more."

"Jesus. Fuck." And that's all it takes and I let go of Poppy's hand and I run into the soapy smelling bathroom and am grateful when I see that the toilet lid is up as lean over and throw up into the awaiting pan. As I am throwing up I hear the bedroom door close and I can't help but think that that might be the last time I hold the hand of my daughter and the last time that I can run my hands through her hair and know that she is alive whilst I do it. That makes me throw up some more and now it is just bile and phlegm and the stink of it surrounds me.

Once I have finished throwing up I take a swig of water from the tap and wash my hands and face and when dried I smell my hands and I can't smell Poppy on them anymore and so I squeeze them tight so much so that my nails dig into the skin until it cracks and bleeds.

In the distance, I hear Jacob start to sing. At first don't know what he is singing, and then I realise he is singing nursery rhymes to the little girl lying in the hospital bed.

~

I flip the lid of the toilet down and sit on the cold white plastic. I hate myself and want to cut every last piece of me off and then put it in a mincer. My mind starts to paint a picture of what is going to go on in that make shift surgery and I shake my head and punch my temples to make it stop. Doing that hurts but I keep punching and slapping myself like some sort of punishment for what is going on. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I should see those pictures, as hard as that will be, I should see them and study them and be sickened by them because that is nothing to what Poppy is going through right now. That sharp pain in my chest returns only now it is joined by lots of little friends and they stab me all over my chest and my stomach and my arms and my brain and behind my eyes and it hurts, Jesus it hurts so much and they won't stop stabbing me.

~

What feels like an hour but has only been twenty minutes passes me by like a snowflake in a winter storm.

I stand in the doorway of the bathroom and listen. I can hear machines beeping and Jacob moving.

I start to walk down the hallway and then some type of surgical saw starts to buzz into life and I turn and run down the stairs and into the dining room and would keep on running if I could but I can't; Jacob might need me. But at least down here I can't hear what is going on up there and so I sit down on the floor with my back up against the wall looking out into his garden through stilted gaps in the table.

Above me, screwed into the wall, a clock ticks and tocks, ticks and tocks, ticks and tocks, ticks and tocks and every second that passes fills like a lifetime and each thought I have that encompasses hours of my past life only takes up a few of those ticks and tocks. Outside the world moves on but very, very, slowly, and my legs become numb and then the base of my back weakens and stiffens and I hope that that numbness travels up my entire body so that I can become totally numb to everything for the next six or God knows how many hours.

But that doesn't happen.

I have to sit through my torment and like it.

~

Jacob described two nothings in his life. I too have a nothing. It isn't as long as Jacobs but nonetheless, I have a nothing in my memories for the majority of that Tuesday in August when the grey clouds rolled in and the storms brewed up like a pot of stewing tea. My nothing ends when I hear Jacob calling me from the upstairs landing and I look at the clock on the wall that has accompanied my black fugue and see that nine hours have passed and outside the world has grown dark and murderous. The wind has picked up and in a garden a few doors up I glimpse washing on the line blowing frantically like a psycho ghost on a manhunt.

The stairway has an odd smell to it.

Upstairs the smell becomes thicker, wetter. It smells of plasters and of bleach and of soap and the stink goes into my mouth and I taste blood and surgical spirits and bleach. She is dead, I know it. I can feel it.

I see Jacob and he looks tired and looking like that scares me.

"Please." I say and that's not what I want to say but I have no control of anything it seems and my throat feels as if there is a fist being rammed down it.

"It is done." Jacob tells me.

"Is she..." and I can't get the words out of my mouth and I hold onto the bannister for fear of falling.

"It worked."

Relief pushes me to the floor and I sink my hands into the thick carpet and begin to cry. There are no tears so I just moan with a happiness I never thought able to feel. It rises from my gut and soars up my body and seems to pour from my face. The stabbing pains that have been with me float away and I start to feel tired, tired to the core, and my head starts to throb.

Jacob kneels down with me. At first he does nothing, leaves me to it, and I like that. And when I am done I lift my head and he is holding a tissue for me and I wipe my hands and nose and dry my eyes with it.

"Thank you." I moan but it doesn't really sound like words just a bubble of nonsense. Jacob gets it though.

"There is still a long way to go, James."

And I nod and try to stand but can't. Jacob helps me up and doesn't strain even though I do. He leads me into the bedroom and Poppy is there. She is under a white sheet, the pink blanket on top of her and joining her under there is two of her dollies. Her arms are flat to the sides so all I can see of her is her face. I kiss that face and she is warm and breathes as she did when I was last with her. I smell her hair and that is as it was and fresh tears roll down my cheeks and I wipe them away.

When I turn to see Jacob, I see in the corner of the room a bin full of the surgeries remnants and I close my eyes to it and open them when I know I would be looking back at Poppy. It's then that I see the wires and tubes coming from up under the sheet and they are plugged into machines that beep and drips that drip clear liquid. Under the crisp white sheet, I can hear a soft ticking noise.

"I don't know what to say."

"James."

I turn to face him quickly because I don't want to see that bin.

"She is still not well. This is just a critical a time as it was when I was operating. The heart is in, it works, there is no issue there. It's the wound, it's fresh and vulnerable. She is young and hasn't much of an immune system, we have to be careful. Infection is our biggest enemy now."

"She will get better. I know it. Can feel it. If there is anything else that can be done, do it. No matter what that is Jacob, do it."

Jacob looks down to the floor and shuffles his feet.

"What is it? There is something that can be done, isn't there. What is it? Do it."

He looks at me and smiles and I see the man that should have been, "I already have." he tells me and those words are spoken as if they were going to be his last.

I walk over to him, not forgetting Poppy, but a concern is building in my head like a little woodpecker tapping out its new home.

"What have you done?"

"I have given her all my medicine."

"I don't understand." And I am close enough to hear his machines working over the sounds of the machines keeping Poppy alive.

"There is none left. She needed a massive dose as a boost to speed up the process."

He looks at me and I look at him and the silence builds like the storm builds outside and he ticks and the machines beep and under all that Poppy ticks and my heart is the only one here that pumps and thuds like a real heart and then I remember what he told me the other day when he was telling me about his strange life. I swallow hard and start to feel numb again as I realise what he has done to save my little girl and as I speak more comes to me and I start to babble but can't stop myself.

"You need that stuff. I remember what you said the other day, that medicine, it keeps you going. Why did you do that? Will she need it? Fucking hell, Jacob, what the fuck have you done? What will become of you, of her without that medicine?"

"Calm down, James. Please, let me explain."

"Calm down! Fuck you!" I push him with all my might, but he doesn't budge and I fall flat on my arse.

He offers me his hand but I swipe it away and stand up brushing my backside as I do.

"Christ." I whisper and fold my arms and can't stand to look at Poppy or him so I just stare at the floor.

"James. Please. She won't need the medicine, not like I do. That heart will keep going until she decides to stop it. But she needed that medicine before any infection spread."

I unfold my arms but still don't know what to do with them.

"But what about you? I may not understand how you work but I understand enough to know that that stuff you take is as important to you as water is to me."

"You're right. It is. But that doesn't matter. I have lived my life, James, lived too many lives to be honest and now it is time for me to go, time for me to sleep. But at least now I can end my life knowing that I have done something good. And that's what matters to me." Jacob looks at Poppy and its there, right there in his eyes, the father he should have been. The loving, caring man he could have been if it weren't for the accident.

I have no words. Such a sacrifice is beyond me.

I go to Jacob, a man with no family, no wife, no children or grandchildren or anything just an old dog and me and Poppy and I open my arms to him and I hug him as I would hug any man that has sacrificed their own life to save the life of their own child.

Jacob doesn't hug me back, but I do feel him sink into the hug, just a little bit, enough to let me know that there is still a man inside that machine.
Time to Heal

Poppy wakes in her own bedroom surrounded by her toys and all the things she knows and loves. Her father is by her side, his eyes are red from lack of sleep, his face wears a thousand creases from worrying.

"Good morning sleepy head." He says to her.

"Good morning, Daddy." She reply's and that makes him smile. He kisses her on the cheek.

Poppy yawns, smiles, and rubs her eyes.

"I had a funny dream."

"Of what Princess?"

"I can't remember. But I had two new dollies."

"Wow. You never guess what?"

"What." Poppy says sitting up with a wince of pain that she didn't expect but it did nothing to stop her looking at her father.

"Look at the end of the bed."

"Cool!" Little Poppy screams with joy as there are two dollies at the end of the bed, both propped up as if they have been sat like that the whole time, watching her as she slept, watching her as she healed.

Then a voice can be heard from outside the bedroom where joy seeps from every corner.

"Knock, knock."

"Come in Aunty Karen."

"Hey girlfriend." Aunty Karen says and her wild hair casts shadows on the walls like chaotic dancers.

"Aunty Karen look, I have two new dollies."

"Cool. Where did you get them?"

"Where did they come from, Daddy?"

"Uncle Jacob got them for you. He knows how much you love your dollies." And before he has finished speaking the girl is playing and singing and being a six-year-old like she was before the surgery she knows nothing about.

The two adults are happy; things have worked out as well as they could have. There was no infection and Poppy's little body heals. The girl plays a little and James stands and wipes a few tears from his eyes and he hugs his sister who watches her niece playing and Karen's face resonates a joy that not many know of.

James says to Karen, "Did you bring the maps for Jacob?"

"Yeah, he is looking at them now. Do you think he will find what he is looking for? Does he even have the time?"

James shrugs.

The little girl stops playing and looks around as if distracted by something.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Princess?"

"What is that ticking noise?"

The End

30th November 2015

Portsmouth, England
