All the Lonely People

by Mike Gayle

It was, however, miles away from the comforts of the home he missed so terribly.

But most of all Hubert liked to walk in the park with Joyce because it made his heart swell with pride that everyone would know he belonged to her and she belonged to him, and in marrying her he had won the jackpot of life.

And in that moment, as he attempted to stem his tears, Hubert realised something he hadn’t quite understood before now: he was lonely, really lonely and most likely had been for a very long time.

People from one land coming to another because of the lack of opportunities in their own, working all the hours in the sort of backbreaking jobs the natives didn’t want to do. Day after day facing all manner of hostilities, wondering if they’d made a mistake leaving home.

He wondered whether she too had experienced this same searing pain as she’d waved him off on the boat that would take him thousands of miles away from her to England.

‘It was an honour and never a chore,’ Hubert replied, fighting back tears of his own. And he meant it too. Caring for Joyce had been much more than a fulfilment of some sort of duty. Instead it had been a daily expression of his love for her, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would have done the same for him had the tables been turned.

In fact, to choose to continue living was to honour the memory of those he had loved and lost, a celebration of the life they had once shared.