I wrap up the session and exchange standard farewells. The room clears. It is Friday afternoon and everybody is keen to escape the cesspit and jump head first into the weekend. I am left in the conference room with just my papers to tidy up. I am not in any hurry. I don't have any workshops booked next week. Nearly every day is the weekend to me.
I shut the door and wave to a few faces I saw on my way into the building, just before lunch. This is not my office. I don't have an office. I go wherever I am booked. I push open the doors and stand in the corridor, staring at the carpet. I am alone. My mind drifts. Do any of my school friends now work at the steel plant in Port Talbot, the heartbeat of the town? Will the steel works will be affected by the import tariff Trump has imposed? I don't know, because I'm not in contact with any of them. My mind drifts to the counselling appointment I had this morning: Richard was on fine form. My days are not usually this busy, but then they do say you wait ages for a bus and then two turn up at the same time.
The doors to one of the lifts are closing. Picking up my pace, I begin walking briskly. Hopefully whoever occupies the lift will notice me and hold the doors open. There will always be another, though, just like the bus. The doors continue edging closer together. There is a voice from inside the lift. I hear it just before the doors meet in the middle.
Have a nice weekend, Jeffrey Allen. See you in 30 days.
My legs buckle. Bile fills my throat. My fist slams against the button to the lift. I look up. The lift is going down. Tenth floor. Ninth floor. Eighth floor. It stops. Somebody is getting in.
I thrust open the door to the stairwell. I clamber down the wide marble stairs, three steps at a time. Pushing through the middle of a couple of guys in suits idling down the stairs, talking on their mobiles, I leave a trail of swear words and obscenities. The floor numbers reduce, one by one, until finally I'm on the ground floor, sprinting past reception and out of the rotating main entrance.
I look left, right and forward. I spot somebody in a long cream raincoat pull a hood over his head and then quickly disappear inside the narrow entrance to the tube station. That is my target. The heat and pollution of the underground makes my skin tight and clammy. I don't care. There he is - navigating past innocent commuters on the escalators. I push people out of the way, uttering meaningless apologies as I do so.
I'm at the bottom of the escalators, running left and then right, not sure which direction he went in. There he is - on one of the trains - his face covered by the hood. I've never ran so fast but - just as I get within touching distance of the train - the doors shut. He is just inches away from me, on the other side of the glass, his face hidden away by the hood. I slam the palm of my hand against the button, but the doors remain shut.
The train moves away. The man in the cream overcoat raises his hand. Waves at me.
The light on the underground feels amazingly - painfully - bright. I sit on a bench to gather my bearings, maybe to stop myself from toppling over. I push my face in my hands and close my eyes. My breathing starts to slow.
I have no idea what just happened.
All I know is that it has been nearly thirty years since anybody called me Jeffrey Allen.
DAY TWO 2ND JUNE 2018
This, I muse, is like wrestling a crocodile.
The early morning sun filters through a tiny crack in the curtain, dusting the cabin gold. The air is so dry it feels like the moisture is being sucked from my body, leaving it weak and limp. I pull the duvet up over my chest, protecting me; then I push it away and lie on my back, naked and exposed. Staying in bed is only going to make my active mind more rampant. Accepting my fate, I unroll my sleep crumpled body and place a reluctant foot down onto the hard, unwelcoming wooden floor.
I know it only takes twenty-five (huge) steps to walk from one end of my long (not so long) boat to the other end, because I counted it. This morning, though, I don't reach more than five steps before I stub my big toe on the kitchen skirting board; I then hop the other twenty steps cursing under my breath. I put on my pink, fluffy dressing gown and glance down at my legs, exposed from the knees. It should have been put in the trash years ago, but then a sane man would never have purchased it in the first place. I pick up a packet from the working top and slip it inside the chest pocket. Pull the belt tight. Nobody deserves to see one of my balls unexpectedly popping out, even if - personally - I'd find it hilarious. Glass in one hand, a bottle in the other and a box of matches balancing between my teeth, I open the (only) door of my boat, my home.
Sure, to the bystander it isn't much, but this life is my choice. Besides, who gives a damn what a bystander thinks? I had much, much more - once - but I gave it
