It’s always hard to just let go.

But I’ll be back before too long.

Despair not. Chin up. Please be strong.

I’d not looked at my own Twitter account for several weeks. My follower count still numbers forty-three. I wondered whether they’d missed me – or been worried by my absence – but there were no notifications to help me corroborate this. Toby Salt’s account was still frozen in time, like a bedroom kept as a shrine to the child who never came home. Bizarrely, his followers were still increasing rapidly. Bramwell Price, it appeared, did not ‘do’ Twitter. I looked at some photos of cats set against a cosmic background. I watched a video of baby pandas.

It is all pure avoidance, of course.

I know I need to get back to it.

It’s just that I’m not sure I can bear to go back in there again.

Thursday November 15th

I lit the wood-burner but the shed is still freezing. You could catch your death in here.

Friday November 16th

Alibi

I didn’t write this.

Must have been someone who looks like me.

I keep my nose clean, see.

I’m not the type to get mixed up in poetry.

Don’t pin this poem on me.

Besides, I was out drowning kittens

when this poem got wrote –

I’d’ve had my hands round one’s throat

around about that time.

So don’t say this poem is mine.

Sergeant Tuck has visited again. He called to ask whether they might hold on to my typewriter for a little longer as it was proving very useful. I gave him my assent and he seemed unduly pleased.

He was about to leave when he noticed my copy of Bramwell Price’s book on the table and asked me if I was a fan.

‘Not really my kind of thing,’ I said. ‘I just like to keep up with what’s happening in the poetry world, that’s all.’

‘I know what you mean, sir,’ said Sergeant Tuck. ‘I just wondered because DI Lansbury and I met him a few weeks ago. Peculiar chap. He’s got a lot of “issues”. We thought he might have something to do with Mr Salt’s disappearance.’

‘Oh, really?’ I said, attempting to keep my tone as neutral as possible.

‘Yes, that’s right. Until we found out he was at an arts festival in Rio at the time. There were photos of him there the whole week. Watertight alibi. Shame, because he was just the kind of person we were hoping might be the murderer,’ he said.

He walked off up the garden path.

Saturday November 17th

Dylan tells me that Stuart takes part in an average of four charitable events a week. This year to date, he’s raised over £120,000 for over eighty different charities. Perhaps one day there will be a Stuart Mould Fundraiser for Beleaguered Poets.

Sunday November 18th

The Postcard