civil partnership

The rain is bucketing down. I can hear the gutters overflowing outside.

The phone is buzzing on my bedside locker. I wake up with a start. It’s Sunday morning. My friend has just been committed to a psychiatric hospital. Mobile phones are contraband, he says. So he’s texting me from under the sheets of his bed. I sit up and rub my eyes. Christ.

I shuffle downstairs and make a pot of coffee. Then I stand up and pace the kitchen floor. Then I sit down again and drum my fingers on the tabletop. I open up my laptop and type “friend in psychiatric hospital” into Google. Then I close it down again. The rain is bucketing outside. I can hear the gutters in the back yard overflowing. Read the rest of this entry »