Finality

02.03.07

I left Belgrade yesterday morning to return to London. I had been there since Sunday 11th February. I had spent the previous four days with you in Liverpool. The last time I saw you, on Saturday 10th February, you were blowing me a kiss from the station platform and laughing at the gaucheness of it all. I was delighted at your half joking-half serious gesture. As soon as the train pulled out, I started to text you frantically as I always did and you responded. In other words, we reverted back to our normal routine. That was the last time I saw you alive.

My twin-brother came to collect me from my friends’ house in Belgrade. They didn’t want me to travel alone.

After I spoke to you for the last time in the very early hours of Monday morning, I placed the phone next to my pillow as I always did – easier to catch the first text of the day from you as it beeped its way into my slumber, and I opened one eye to check before rolling over to drift off again with you in my thoughts and my heart: where you have been for the past year or so. Constantly.

I wouldn’t receive another text from you again. And I won’t ever.