GLOVE 3

WHEN:	18th November 2000, 9.40 am
WHERE:	Foundation House, Cromwell Road, SW7
HAND:	Right
DESCRIPTION:	Another work or gardening glove. It is red like wet brick, rubber, with an elasticated cotton wrist. The first glove to be approved by the European Community.

I got the card the morning of a doctor's appointment. I had to go get my ears syringed. It happens.
When I recognised her writing on the envelope I thought it was going to be a thank you card for the box of fun, but it wasn't. It was one of those 'I think we should be friends' letters.

It's not that I hadn't seen this coming. I had said before she'd gone up to Manchester that maybe this would be the solution. I'd miss her so much while she was away and things had taken a bit of a downturn.

I guess I'd been collecting the gloves to try and commiserate with them. To understand how they felt as one half of a broken pair. I knew things had been going badly with Kitty and I thought that by sympathising with misplaced woollen objects I found on the street I could transfer my crappy self pity onto them.

But it was me who had lost her, wasn't it? I had pushed her away with my selfishness. I wasn't the misplaced glove, she was. I was the guy with one cold hand now, wasn't I? I didn't know.

It's rubbish at the end of things. You think about what you should have said, what you should have done. You retrace your steps in your relationship. You think about where you're sure you had it lost. Where you could have lost it. But the fact remains. It's lost.