And it was then, amidst the sighs and swoons, the squeals and the whoops, that I saw Liz. She was gazing up at him, with an expression paused somewhere between unexpected admiration and unbounded wonder. I scrambled blindly to my feet, and out of the auditorium, my mind reeling with its imprint of her beautiful, treacherous face.

Tuesday July 3rd

Somehow, I took the first train of the day out of Audley End. To distract me from myself, I attempted to write a poem about the view from my carriage window:

A pylon looms up suddenly like a sini-

Two birds puncture the early morning blue as th-

Cows stare into the distance and wonde-

Fields sleep drowsily, waiting for-

Buddleia bubbles up along the tr-

A woman waves at her youn-

Some buildings.

Graffitti.

King’s Cross Railway Station.

It was no use. The world was passing me by too fast and everything was hopeless.

Wednesday July 4th

I had a dream that I’d murdered Toby Salt.

Liz was running a workshop on how to lay out a newspaper. We were looking at text alignment and I was experiencing some difficulties with a ragged right side. Toby Salt began to mock me.

I’d always been a marginal figure, he said. I should climb back into the gutter where I belonged.

Liz laughed at his awful puns. I flushed angrily, then proceeded to bludgeon him with the keyboard from an old nineteenth-century Linotype machine.

I ran out into the street in panic and bumped straight into a newspaper seller, who was brandishing the evening edition. I stared at the headline: ‘POET FOUND MURDERED!’. The front page had been printed in red ink. I inspected it more closely. It wasn’t red ink, it was blood. It looked like poet’s blood.

I woke up with a shudder and consulted my Dream Dictionary. But there was nothing in it about Linotype machines and so I am none the wiser as to what it all might mean.

Thursday July 5th

My phone buzzed. There was a message from Liz:

Are you around for a drink tonight?

We need to talk.

I need to know where we stand.

I felt like responding that I knew exactly where she had been standing, i.e. next to Toby Salt at an inexplicably oversubscribed poetry reading in Saffron Walden. But I restrained myself; I am not one to bear grudges. My reply was measured and courteous:

Can’t make tonight.

There is an old episode of A Touch of Frost on ITV4

that I’m planning to watch.

There were no further messages from Liz so I can only assume that has drawn a line under the matter.

Friday July 6th