42-43 Years Old

Fronde has gone.

We tried to search his room for clues but have no idea where his room is, or if he ever had one. We have no idea how old he is.

Perhaps he’s been gone for months.

His mother remembers he always wanted to go to London. Get into business. He always wanted to wear one of those beautiful, impeccable suits and ride around and around on the London Underground.

We leave notes everywhere and I try to put pictures up, but really, I can’t picture him at all.

Sometimes he has a beard.

Sometimes he is wearing a t-shirt with ‘Boring’ written on it.

In London May found herself following the shape of a man with a beard around the Euston/Kings Cross loop

(Take the Victoria Line south from Kings Cross to Euston, then change at Euston. Go South on the Northern Line to Kings Cross then change and go South on the Victoria line to Euston. Repeat forever.)

‘Fronde?’

He stops. Looks at her. She cries because she has no idea if she has found her son or not. Nobody, not even me, knows if it is him.

Meanwhile, at the Organic Juicebar, a woman tells me she used to be Fronde’s lover.

‘Took me to this hotel a couple of times’ she says

‘Told me once that if we’re out for dinner and I want to get up on the table on all fours, he would get up on the table on all fours too.
And there we’d be:
Two people, up on a table’

The most romantic thing anyone has ever said to her.

At the hotel, I checked into their room. Place is drowning in blankness. I spend hours on the bed staring at a couple of shiny black pebbles on the mantelpiece, thinking

‘They must have been people once. People who stayed here too long.’

Honestly, this room makes me feel awful, but I booked in and I’ve been here for almost the entire year. I’ve got no idea how to leave.

Somewhere in London, my daughter's weeping and clinging to someone who may or may not be wearing a t–shirt that says ‘Boring’ on it.