A sad but hopeful story today, written in the dark early hours of the morning.  Do comment and let Cigs know what you think - do you like the change in voice at the end?  What do you think of the story as a whole?  What would you change/keep the same and why? Constructive criticism, as always, welcome.

Katja x

The quest came to an end one morning in a cafe in Soho, the kind that sell sticky cakes under plastic covers and pizza by the slice. She was still drunk from the night before and her eyes felt like marbles on a playground. Her eyeliner was smudged and her lipstick had been worn away kissing a boy she'd neither liked nor been intrigued enough by to question further than his name, age and profession - no more information than you'd expect from a hostage. Pushing him against the sweaty red wall of the night club she'd felt his tongue in her mouth and closed her eyes in the hope that the physical world would melt like paint from an artist's brush, thrust into the dirty water of her thoughts. But the world was persistent and his slug tongue probed her mouth, his hands running up her tights, pushing her skirt up. She kissed him hard with finality and left.

It had been three am before she slumped on her bed. This morning her clothes smelt of the cigarette she had bummed from a bag lady at the bus stop and her feet pulsed in her heels. She pulled her scarf round her and looked over the rims of her glasses at the fraying laminate menu on the table in front of her. A pot of tea, really strong, not piss-weak like her mother's milky brew, and toast, cheap white bread with margarine. That'd make the world right. It must. It had to. It would.

When the tea came, she stirred it over and over again staring at the ripples on the surface and trying to think of nothing much at all. But every time she emptied her mind it would all come rushing back in again like a spare room cupboard opened suddenly, a childhood's worth of stuffed toys spilling out. Whenever the world was still she thought of him. Not the way he finished but the way he was before, his strong arms and the brightness of blue eyes, his stubble when he'd forgotten to shave, its comforting roughness, the way he smelt just out of the shower. She made her mind shoo away memories of surgical shampoo and hospital disinfectant smells. He didn't belong there. It was a wrong memory - him sat up in that bed, his shirts folded neatly on the chair, his trousers hanging on a rail. When he was gone, they sat there still. No one thought to tidy up. But he would have; he would have wanted things neat and nice for her. Not a man for loose ends. Not a man for unnecessary words.

The letter had been on the mat when she had returned from the hospital. She knew his handwriting even from a distance, tight script but for long looping 'g's, always written in green ink since one day in primary school when he'd found someone else's biro in his desk and begun writing with it. He had written the letter with her Christmas present to him, a beautiful silver-plated fountain pen from Cross. He liked the way it sat in his hand and she used to watch him at his desk, still stubbornly writing letters even though the world had acquiesced to email. Sometimes he was a man out of time and it thrilled her, his total disdain for the easy route, for the way that everyone else did it.

She slid her nail under the fold and moved it slowly, breaking the gum but not the paper of the envelope. She wanted to keep it intact, like a child trying to open a present to preserve the wrapping paper. The letter was neat and short, no words wasted. He told her that he loved her, that he always had, but now he was going she had to find someone else to love her. He wrote it beautifully but frankly. He knew that she would be sad but she must remember that he loved her so much that he could not bear to think that she would be alone. A tear fell onto the paper and the final full stop smudged into a river of ink.

She hated that he meant it. And she loved that he did too. Stupid vainglorious fool. She looked down at the menu and saw another tear streaking down the laminate. The memory bit the back of her throat like whiskey after midnight and she stared hard into the mirror on the opposite wall, looking straight past a boy who was also sitting alone, a boy who was looking at her while he pretended to read his magazine.

He'd eaten his breakfast there every morning since June. The strip lighting was too harsh and hookers went there to drink tea to warm their aching bones but he liked it somehow. It made him feel like no-one, like nothing, just a bag full of chemical reactions - a mouth full of tea chewing on a bacon sandwich, like a machine made by a mad scientist type from spare bits of metal. No one talked to him. The waiter was Turkish and muttered most of time. They bowed and danced around each other every morning but the boy never knew the older man's name. It wasn't the way things worked in there. You came in, you bought tea, you sat down, they brought toast, sometimes eggs, often bacon. Talking wasn't part of things. The dominant sound was the broken old radio playing gypsy songs and Europop, burbling out from behind the counter, and the waiter cursing his cousin who worked on the grill. Too slow! Too slow. Always too slow, though a bacon sandwich would appear at a table almost before the order had fallen from the customer's lips.