She doesn’t speak on the way to the station. She is thinking of her new job prospects,
her ex boyfriend and the warm bed she has left behind. Our relationship has come to a
slow lurching halt like the trailered caravan we are sat lazily behind. I could say that I
am surprised. But I am not. This is the third time in ten months she has dropped me
like the pathetic sack-of-shit I truly am. But this time something seems different.
Final. It would seem that my constant doting and pitiful insecurities have gotten the
better of both of us. I roll another cigarette and watch the wobbly trees in the early
morning sun pass us gently by. I wonder if there was somebody else? Probably, I
decide. The secret phone calls, the long trips to the bathroom with phone clutched
tightly in hand and a ringer set permanently to silent would make it hard for anyone to
ignore.
‘I thought we were happy.’ I hear myself choke.
‘Sometimes.’ She replies, her eyes unflinching from the caravan ahead.
I crane my neck round to look at the person I once knew and realise, for the first
time, that I never really knew her at all. That she is a stranger, a selfish impostor.
Even her once soft features now appear hard and worn. And I wonder who is inside of
her, operating her - drunk at the controls. The dampness on my cheeks confuses and
embarrasses me. For ten months I have been used and played games with wilfully. I
tell myself that she’ll be someone else’s problem now, someone else’s eternal mind
fuck but it doesn’t stop the chain saw in my chest cutting and burning away at another
piece of me. Ashamed of my tears I turn my head back towards the vanishing
landscape disappearing into blur.
‘Fucking, caravans’ I say but she does not answer.
