I saw you from the top deck of the 243. I was with Marianne. We were going to see a film. I don’t remember which one. This is what I remember: seeing you. In fact I see you a lot in crowds, coming towards me along an underground platform, turning into a supermarket aisle. But this time it was really You and not just a shadow in a stranger’s face. I am used to the mirage of you.

It took me a breath to realise that the gap between memory and life had closed. There you were; hood up against the cold, BMX between your legs. You drew on your cigarette and the curve of your neck as you tilted your head back between drags was the same as ever. This startled me: I’d forgotten your mannerism and not realised that I’d let that small part of you go. It’s back again now. Just seeing you from that bus window opened out the scrapbook I keep in my mind of you.

You.

I examined how I felt. So many times I’d imagined how I’d feel. So many times I’d practiced this sighting, with all those mirages shimmering across London. I felt – relief, sadness, love. Love in a faint way. A memory of being in love. It wasn’t vital. It didn’t pour out of me. I thought that it would. I remember lying in bed and watching you dress and having to hold my mouth shut so that I didn’t let out the words, ‘I love you’. It had been shuttered in me for so long I thought it had either withered and died, leaving a shape in the dust, or that it’d grown yellow and spindly towards the light becoming barely recognisable. A pathetic thing. It’s still some thing. You still make something like love happen in me. Sadness crept. It is always there. I don’t think you can lay a finder’s claim to that. It is part of me. It is mine, not yours and for this sighting to allow it a window to slip through is nothing for you to be proud of. I was angry when you told me ‘we’ were stopping. More angry than sad. I will not accept the sadness that drew in when I saw you from the bus window. My breath bloomed against the glass as you breathed smoke from your mouth. I imagined that the sadness was expelled with the breath. Each drop of condensed breath contained the emotion and so it was gone. It came back later, as expected.

I admit to relief. I have been waiting so long to see you. I had almost stopped looking out for you. The adrenaline that cramped my stomach on each partial sighting could not be sustained. It was a relief to finally see you and to have survived the seeing. I wanted you to look up and see me – didn’t you sense my presence? You didn’t. You had your phone in your hand. Between drags of the cigarette you flicked a thumb over the screen. When I think about looking down on you from my double-deckered height I wonder how long the bus had really lingered at the stop. I might have expanded the moment in my mind. It feels epic, but it must not have been. Soon enough the engine kicked in and, trembling, the bus pulled away. I would have looked back, but Marianne said something to me. Whatever she said I don’t remember. I know that I didn’t tell her what I’d seen – who I’d seen. It would have disturbed her. And it was private.

I haven’t seen you again since, but when I do (I allow ‘when’ not ‘if’) I will make you see me. You’ll say, ‘hello’.