GLOVE 2

WHEN:	14th November 2000, 7.00pm
WHERE:	Corner of Endell Street and Long Acre, WC2
HAND:	Right
DESCRIPTION:	A lady's brown leather glove. Fairly small. The colour of well polished mahogany. There are three lines of stitching on the back.

The job we had worked on early in the year had finished in September and we were no longer seeing each other every day. We were both independent people. I think that's partly what we liked about each other, the fact that we could exist separately but together we felt so right, so much more of ourselves came out when we spent time together.

But the end of the job did mean we were drifting apart. We were making each other unhappy in tiny, incremental ways. But you can't lose something in stages. One day you have it, the next day you don't. Is that right? Or but sometimes a thing is lost on one day but you don't know it's lost until the time comes when you go to use it again and it's not there. It's been lost, but the feeling you get when you realise it's gone is delayed. This was more like what was happening to us.

We should have ended it at the end of the job in hindsight, but we had been so happy together before that neaither of us wanted to see that happiness end. I guess it had ended though. I guess it had been lost but we didn't know.

Kitty took a job in Manchester and I took a job in London. Now this meant that we wouldn't be able to spend too much time together in the next couple of months but we thought we'd get through it. We spent a long time on the phone to each other; I wasn't able to go and visit her during the weeks because of both our work schedules and then weekends seemed to be troublesome too. For example, we could have shared one weekend together, but it was the christening of my goddaughter and Kitty couldn't come to London and then out to the country and then back north. It was difficult, but we would get through it.

I wanted her to know how much I missed her so I put together a care package, full of candy, silly magic tricks, magazines, bits of make-up I knew she loved. She didn't mention she'd received it on the telephone, but I guess she must have.

The following weekend I freed myself. I made sure I was able to make the trp and I took the plunge and rang her hotel to say I could spend at least two evenings with her.
The hotel said she had checked out for the weekend and so I thought, ah well. Maybe she's coming down here. But she left a message to say she was ill and that she was going to Glasgow to visit her aunt instead. I hadn't seen her in three weeks now, I think, but it may just have been two and a half. But even so. It was miserable.