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erratic and the arms a different length. It looked monstrous. She
scrunched the fabric into a ball. As she did there was a loud bang at the door.
    ‘Auntie Linda! Auntie Linda!’ Poppy said. ‘Are you awake?’
    ‘Don’t come in,’ Linda shouted, throwing the jumper to the floor. ‘Please, Poppy, please don’t come in.’

What’s in Swindon?

The last time I’d seen Angela Fulton she was leaving Wigan’s World Famous Winter Wonderland dragging a three-foot stuffed rabbit through a field of dirty fake snow.
I’d won the luckless animal for her moments earlier, but it had not proved the conciliatory gesture I’d hoped. Instead, Angela had stormed off in exasperation and hurled the rabbit onto
a pile of rubbish sacks by the exit. I watched her leave and in an impotent rage headed to the refreshment tent and got drunk on mulled wine. By the time I got home, all of her possessions were
gone.
    We were in our early twenties then, the two of us pale and skinny and living in an exacting proximity to each other. We knew no one else in Wigan, and made no effort to mix with people outside
of our respective jobs. Instead we sat in our smoky one-room flat, talking, occasionally fighting and in the evenings making love. Afterwards, by the light of a low wattage bulb, we’d inspect
our bodies: the constellations of bruises our bones had made.
    How we endured such isolation for so long is hard to say. I suspect now that we found it somehow romantic to live such a shabby, closed-off life. We had no television, no phone; just our books
and an inherited Roberts radio that only picked up Radio 4 and John Peel. There was the odd excursion to Liverpool and Manchester, to the Lakes and the Wirral, but for the most part we stayed
indoors, paralysed by the intimacy of our affair.
    Of course, it could not last, and those last few months were unbearable, horrible. Without either of us noticing it, the real world slowly began to encroach. I started to go out on my own and
come back late at night, drunk and insensible. Angela would disappear for hours without ever divulging where she was going. To spite her, one evening I came home with a second-hand television set
and placed it pride of place on the dresser. In retaliation, Angela insulted the way I looked, the length of my hair, the state of my clothes, the number of cigarettes that I smoked, my childish
sense of humour. One night she threw a book at my head and called me a thoughtless fucking cunt. The next morning neither of us could remember what I was supposed to have done.
    Angela was not my first love, nor I hers; but it felt like we should have been. Years later, I would imagine her laughing at the appearance of my new girlfriend; in idle moments wonder whether
she still dressed the same way. Late at night I’d remember her naked body, picturing her with a waxed bikini line that she’d never had. In such moments, I would consider trying to find
her again, but didn’t have a clue where to begin. Still, the compulsion was there: like a seam of coal, buried yet waiting to be mined.

    That morning I left my house and took the Underground to work, bought a coffee and drank it at my desk while reading the newspaper. At 9 a.m. there was the usual departmental
meeting, which was swiftly followed by a conference call. I ate my lunch in the courtyard and then browsed in a bookshop. When I arrived back in the office I had nineteen voicemails: three of which
were just the sound of a phone being replaced on its cradle.
    I answered the emails, returned the phone messages and was about to make my afternoon cup of tea when the phone rang again. It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hesitated, then picked up
the receiver. There was a pause and then a woman’s voice asked for Marty. She was the only one who’d ever called me Marty.

    Angela sounded exactly as she had before, and I recalled for a moment the way she used to breathe heavily in my ear. She asked me how I was and I