My Policeman

by Bethan Roberts

I’ve never mentioned to Tom that the Verona visit included a day trip to Venice. Venice is one of the many words we do not utter to each other since you took him there. I’d imagined it many times before, but nothing could have prepared me for the detail of the place, the way that everything is beautiful, even the drainpipes and the back alleys and the water buses. Everything. Wandering around the city, alone, my head was filled with images of the two of you. I saw you arriving at Santa Lucia station, stepping from the train into the sunlight like film stars. I saw you slipping across bridges together, your reflections shimmering queasily in the water below. I saw the way you’d stand close to each other at the quay, waiting for the vaporetto. In every calle and sotoportego I imagined the pair of you, backs turned to me, heads inclined toward each other. You would have looked at Tom with a new intensity in this strange and magnificent city, loving the way his blond hair and large limbs made him stand out from the dark, nimble Venetian crowd. At one moment, I found myself wanting to cry as I sat on the cool steps of the Santa Maria della Salute, watching a couple of real young men read a guidebook together, each tenderly holding the edge of a page, sharing the information. I wondered, for the hundredth time, where you were and what had happened to you. I even sought out the Carpaccios in the Accademia and stared for a long time at the two men in the English Ambassadors painti...