Any amateur psychologist would trace the start of this collection to the death of your mother. Walking home from the funeral, you came across a real find. A giant Perspex letter H, fallen from the side of a closed down factory. They made plumbing supplies there. The H was Impact font. You dragged it down the alleyways, crossed into the lane that your house backed onto. It was an effort, heaving the little rugby posts through the back gate, but you still went back to see if other letters had jumped.
In the winter you
trained yourself to see these things before others. Lone gloves, lost scarves,
a bus pass, a Madness cassette. Nothing as large as that H, but everything
just as precious.
Sometimes the finds
felt wrong, but only for a second. An engagement ring in an open swimming
pool locker, a walking stick against a graveyard gate. The shed became a
museum. You bought a padlock with a fiver you saw fall from a paper boy’s
pocket on Christmas Eve.
You hadn’t told
anyone about your collection. It was sacred to you, a secret from the world.
When the first item appeared outside your back gate that January morning,
you thought it a coincidence. A bucket and spade, the castle turrets still
flecked with old sand.
Soon, other items
appeared – a skipping rope, a stuffed guinea pig, two bibles.
Then the knife.
Now you don’t want
to go out. But the urge is so strong. What will be outside today?
You pull on your
tattered red Converse, the hole in the right sole getting bigger. You pull at
the gate and as you do so something tells you it is already too late.
