The Witnesses Are Gone

by Joel Lane

The future seemed more real than the past.

Judith in this kind of mood always made me tie myself in knots, but the best I could manage was a half-hitch.

Films can help us make sense of life.

Books can’t change your life, but they can ruin your holiday.

What’s the point of telling people to expect horror? Takes all the mystery out of it. You might as well just live your own life. That ends in death and pain as well, but we manage not to face it.’

It was like the time we’d tried to make love and failed, and she’d said, ‘How can you be inside me when you’re not even inside yourself?’

And insomnia is always a solitary experience, even if your lover can’t sleep either.

After all, my relationship with Judith hadn’t ended – she just wasn’t there anymore.