Of course I heard all about him too, but there's two sides to every story. I used to see him in the library or sitting on his own in The Country Kitchen, and he was the most harmless looking creature in the world. To tell the truth, he was very good-looking. Even the girls - and they believed every badminded whisper in the street - had to admit that much. The morning he bumped into me at Fortune's corner he couldn't apologise enough. At the time I didn't notice the smell of drink but I remembered it later on. When I met him again he invited me for coffee, and the minute he sat in front of me I fancied him like mad. I know it sounds stupid, but that's the way it was. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he told me that the handbag was his mother's.

I wonder have they found him yet? I was only doing my duty. That's all. Doing my duty like Elvis in 1958. Private 53310761. The bastard deserved it. Didn't he destroy my mother? The Main Street, the Napoli, the chapel. Even the Kingmobile. I’m sorry, Mr Murphy, but under the Road Traffic Act… Road traffic. I gave him traffic. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That's what it says in the bible. Lex talionis. An eye for an eye.

In the beginning I used to humour him, but he knew I'd rather talk about anything but poetry. And do you know why we got on so well? Because I could see that it was all an act, all looking for attention. I knew that, behind the big words, all the talk about the past, how there's an ancestry to every breath we take, all the preserve our planet for posterity, he was no different from the rest of us...

He could be so romantic too. Like the time he spent a fortune on the gold ring and then sawed it in half. I said are you mad? but he said that sailors used to do it years ago. He gave me one half and made me swear that no matter what happened, no matter where we ended up, we'd always be together. Another night, at the pictures, he pulled me into him and whispered I love you so much I want to inject your blood into my veins.

I felt so sorry for him living out there on his own and the place falling down around him. I thought that if I was with him every night he might go easy on the drink. I found out after that he was in every pub in the town before he called for me at all. Then I tried cooking. He'd say the meal was brilliant but he was sorry, he had to meet someone at nine o'clock. This went on for the best part of a year. Honestly, I'd love to stay, but I have to meet someone at nine o'clock. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for weeks, then he'd turn up on the doorstep smiling like a Jehovah. I'd throw my arms around him and bring him into the bed. We never said a word, just lay there holding hands and him crying no-one understands me, no-one understands me.

What could I do? She came at me like a disease. continue