Where we were

Heartfelt thank-yous to everyone on here for their comments on yesterday’s news. I don’t need to say though that I’d trade them all away just to see him again.
I travelled up to the old gaff; the daughter was already there when I arrived and we three sat and tearfully talked.
Then I took myself off and strolled round the old haunts – places we’d been together, as if I’d be able to get close to him, to conjure him up. 
And crossing Harrison Road who came striding towards me but AJ. What are you up to in the old hood, he asked, and I blurted out the reason. The best of hugs, but keeping it together wasn’t easy. 
And later after I started notifying a few friends, and spoke for the first time to his girlfriend Mena, I sat and immersed myself in old photos, in texts, anything. I’d written about the trajectory he was on over seven years ago, and the Guardian published it. The only thing I’d falsified was changing his guitar to his keyboard in an effort to put anyone off the scent but Rog read it and realised it was about Robbie straight away. I wonder whether happy endings were ever possible.