I phoned Jenny this morning. Been going to do it for ages but what with the Bank

Holiday and the pressure of deadlines...

   I waited till Mary was out. I don`t suppose she would have minded, me talking to

Jenny again, knowing how close I`d once been to Harry.

   Mary met him once. It was soon after Jen and I had split up. I knew she`d like him

the minute he walked in the pub. Maybe it was the big daft grin. Always had it. I

remember the first time Jenny took me home to meet her parents. Petrified I was,

but as soon as I stepped into that cosy, pipe-smoke filled parlour and saw that 

welcoming grin it was as if the knot in my stomach had never been there.

     Why did we get on so well? He was jazz mad and I liked country music. I

supported Nottingham Forest with a zeal bordering on madness and he was an out-

and-out Rugby man. I suppose what bound us together, kept us talking long after I

should have been dashing off to catch the last bus home, was our love of words.

      Harry had had several pieces published in provincial newspapers but he wrote

mainly for the local rag. Gardening bits mainly. Mad on gardening he was. Next to

writing there was nothing he liked better than to get up early on a Saturday morning

and trundle his rickety old wheelbarrow up to his allotment. I`d go and sit with him

sometimes, share a mug of scolding brown tea on the steps of his old shed. It was

during one of these visits that Harry told me to stop looking for excuses and write

the novel I was always banging on about.
   
     "If you want it son, and I mean really want it, then you`ll do it, no matter what"

So I did, and three years later I had a two book contract worth fifty grand, and a

broken marriage....

      "Hello Davy, how are you?"

Jenny still sounded the same, a little tired perhaps but with that hint of a croak in
 
her voice that I`d always found so sexy.

      "Sorry to hear about Harry Jen, I would have rung earlier but-

       "No need to apologise Davy," she interrupted. "Never were much good at

keeping in touch were you."

There it was again. That little edge in the voice. She couldn`t help it. Never could,

even on the rare occasions when things were going well between us.

     "I saw it in the Gazette." I continued. "Must have been quite a shock-

     "He often talked about you, you know," she cut in sharply. "When he could

remember." 

      "What happened exactly?" I asked.

 For a moment the line was silent. "Nobody really knows. One minute mum`s

making him a pot of tea, the next he`s lying in the middle of the road outside

with...with half his face missing."

I felt the lump constricting in my throat. "I`m so sorry Jen..If there`s anything-

     "He kept all the newspaper cuttings about you," Jenny cut in again. "Even bought

half a dozen Sunday papers some weeks when he knew they were doing a review of

one of your bloomin` books."           
 
Her anger hung in the air like a thunder cloud. "How are you doing by the way, still

making obscene amounts of money."

     "Look if it`s money you want I can-

     "Why Davy? Why didn`t you come and see him. You where all he had sometimes

you know. He`d sit in that old chair of his flicking through that bloody scrapbook.

Hour after hour he`d just sit there, turning those friggin` pages over and over."

Anger welled up from somewhere deep inside me. Jenny was right. I had been a

selfish bastard. Wrapped up in my cosy new life I`d chosen to ignore the one man

who`d made it all possible. I mumbled something inane into the handset before

slamming down the receiver.....


The grave stood on a grassy slope overlooking the town. I flicked up the collar of my

coat against the raw wind and stared down at the newly turned turfs.

      "Sorry it`s a bit late old lad," I said, placing the sheets of newly typed paper

under a heavy stone. "But I thought you might like to give me your opinion on this,

when you`ve got a minute that is..."