The absence of Robinson

We sat embarrassed after Robinson had gone. The earnest conversation killed the evening like a slaughterman's bolt and we left. In the rain we found that we were walking in the same direction. Neither of us had the energy to say an excuse and, like prisoners around a yard, we walked looking ahead and not at each other.

One or the other of us would mention him. Robinson in West Street bars. Robinson reading in the Peace Gardens. Robinson sitting under the mirror that now reflects nothing.

We thought we saw Robinson in a car coming off the ring road but he didn't wave, didn't stop. Crossing the Porter Brook, a phone rang, either yours or mine. We looked at it, hoping for Robinson, but the number was withheld. I answered it, or you did, and we listened silently to a recorded message about payment protection insurance. Press 1 to speak to our helpdesk. We hung up.

I saw Robinson again, walking the streets, alone in the dark by the derelict factories and the converted warehouses of the Cultural Industries Quarter. He stopped to light a cigarette by the entrance to a yard under smokeless chimneys and dark windows, mourning the absence of something, memories of a city that used to work.