Life line

53.

5+3=8.

8 is my favourite number.

This should be a good age.

Wait... 44... was that good? 2015... no, that wasn't a good year.

35? 2006. I think I was made redundant? Or at least, I was doing a job I didn't like. It wasn't a good year.

26. 1997. Well, no... not great. Not awful.

17? 1988. Not good.

8? 1979. I can't recall what country I was in.

I was thinking this when I awoke. It didn't take long. A couple of minutes and I burst out crying.

I stopped because there are no tears when I cry these days. And no one to notice anyway.

I thought that seeing Bobbit would cheer me. So I went out. Wind. Rain. Cold. The fence falling down. Half an hour. Nothing.

At lunchtime, which I waited for like a passenger on a freezing platform longing for the delayed train, I went out again. "Bobbit?" I called. Nothing. It was cold, wet, windy. The fence falling down. I huddled under the honeysuckle. Half an hour. Waited.

There were robins singing - but the two neighbours. I knew they were the neighbours. Their locations.

The male blackbird was subsinging in the lilac. The juvenile was hunkered in the honeysuckle. The blue tits chattered above me.

But no Son of Bob.

In the afternoon, desperate, anxious, I spent another half hour in the cold and wet. looking at the collapsing fence, calling. Nothing.

The sun went down. I could hear the next door robin. I went out again. Looked at the sky.

I thought about 53 and 8.

I thought about 62 and 71. 80.

I thought about what I could withstand.

What I could not.

I imagined a small body, feet curled.

And then, I heard a sound and I knew that the phrase of the song was Bobbit's. I walked to the hedge. I called. I whistled.

A figure on the fence. Wings blurring past my head. A silhouette in the tree.

I can withstand another day.