Glove 9

WHEN:	1/1/01 2.15pm
WHERE:	On a Piccadilly Line tube train on the way home from the party
HAND:	Right
DESCRIPTION:	'Rebel Active', blue soft ladies glove with a little clip at the wrist.

I was still in my snakeskin jacket and leather jeans from the night before, feeling manky but looking sharp. Irene wanted me to make it to a New Years Day walking tour that afternoon, but I was whacked. I collected the glove and went home to spend the first afternoon of the new year alone and cosy. We spoke on the phone that evening and though she had to go to New York for business, I couldn't wait to see her again and really get this good thing going.

A couple of nights later Irene told me she couldn't see me any more as she was really seeing this guy in the States. He was actually married, but she somehow felt there was more of a future with him than with me.

I looked at my collection and felt exactly like they felt. Lost.

But OK, I began to work all this out. You know, it was all very well to collect these gloves, but the other thing that's lost is the other glove. The glove the owner ends up with. The one I didn't find on the street. How do they feel when their partner has gone forever. They feel useless. Nobody wants to keep just one hand warm. What's the point? I suppose they get thrown out just as much as the lost one. There is a cruelty there, that through no fault of its own, the unlost glove finds itself unwanted.

And what was it with me? Am I just the odd glove that can't find its pair? I thought it was Kitty, but that turned out to be wrong. Now Irene. Kitty I hadn't seen since the letter and wouldn't see properly until March to give her her Christmas present. And Irene, well.

I couldn't work out which glove I ever was. The one that's lost or the one that isn't. The one that's left behind as its partner goes out into the world. Or the one that never comes home again.

I think I laughed myself to sleep that night.

Gloves, eh?