ECHO 15/4/06 - London

The house is quiet. It shows signs of recent neglect - food scraps in the kitchen sink, mail unsorted in piles in the hallway. The couple I share it with have just split up but are still living under the same roof; different rooms, different beds.

A bunch of pale pink roses in a vase on the kitchen windowsill. They are a new addition, replacing the ailing bunch of early spring blooms we left behind a week ago. I wonder which of the two bought them and arranged them. Either would provide a very different motive for them being here. If she bought them it may well have been to cheer herself up by having something of beauty around, some feminine symbol to provide strength, visual power. If it was he then perhaps they were a last ditch attempt at reconciliation (too late) or simply to say sorry.

She has chosen a room downstairs to sleep in for the moment. He it seems has not slept in what was their bedroom, preferring instead his smoking den. It is tough to enter a dead love bedroom, there is something of a morgue about it - full of memories and ghostly images and smells of such intimacy the soul can’t really bear the pain. Easier for him to remain where he can smoke and watch DVDs and have the heating on without too much sense of shared time or history. But I know from experience that he is only storing up trouble for the future.