An old friend visited tonight. They said they’d never really left. They were here to stay a while but this time I wasn’t allowed to lock them in a room and lose the key (or bury or throw it from the top window), or they would sue me; which I didn’t think you could do to someone who had forgotten how to smile and mean it, or be called beautiful and believe it. I carried their bags, all the same, up the stairs; the threat subsiding with the whistle of the kettle on the hob. The guest bed wasn’t made so I suggested they had mine. Their blue coat looked at home, carelessly thrown on my bedsheets. Yet their sullen off-centre stare suggested they were here out of obligation, not from any motivation other than to cause a nuisance and eat all of my biscuits. My attempt at conversation was…