Halfway to Four - Stephen A. Roberts

Jim T introduced Nicole to us a while back with a dark tale of murder (Click Here), in which it was teasingly hinted that there were 3 other guilty secrets to be revealed.

Forgive me Jim for taking it upon myself to provide one of them. Now only 2 remaining...

Halfway to Four

I bumped into him a few weeks after
Nicole's funeral
I sort of remember him being there
in the background,
in fact it occurred to me that
I had seen him before, somewhere
just out of my vision,
a grey-shape mystery man
from a Cold War spy film.

But he was no spook;
he was a scruffy individual
a proto-punk with drainpipe jeans
and naturally spiky hair -
we started to hang out and
listen to the New York Dolls,
Lou Reed and early Bowie,
drinking cheap spirits and
whatever else we could score.

One day, he looked at me and said:
I saw you set the fire
maybe she deserved it.
I then realised where I'd seen him
this shadow, this
uninvited understudy,
rider of a beat-up Kawasaki
that had seen better days -
in need of maintenance...

it was no wonder
the brakes failed.

How many guilty secrets can you keep?
I'm halfway to four now.

Stephen A. Roberts