Leonard is feeding the dusty battered suitcase into the mouth of the wheelie-bin when he catches a flash of azure blue shining from inside.  He judders to a complete stop and holds himself perfectly still to give his eyes a chance to focus.  There’s something in there.  His heart speeds up.  He pulls the suitcase back out and opens the jaws of the zips wide, letting in light.  It’s a handbag.  It must have been one of Rose’s.  Rose, his dear dear wife.  His body softly crumples in on itself.  He presses his forehead with his left palm.  It’s been nearly three years now.  Three years since that last migraine that wasn’t a migraine at all, but a clot of blood that detached itself from one of her arteries and travelled up to her brain.  Setting off an explosion of pain, filling her with a beating, rising fear.  His Rose.  Three years.  It seems like yesterday.  It seems like a life-time ago.

He hunkers down on the pavement, his sixty two-year-old knees reminding him to move carefully.  He lifts the handbag out, brushing away cobwebs from the material as if he were stroking his daughter’s cheek.  He places it on the step beside him, wiping dust from the cold bricks before he sets it down, and checks the inside of the suitcase, sliding a flat hand inside the pockets.  A biro lid, a sweetie wrapper, nothing else.  He pushes the suitcase back into the wheelie-bin - it just fits and the sides of it scrape the plastic.  He looks around nervously to see if anyone has seen him, not knowing why it matters if they have.  His heart is slowing down.  He sucks in two lung-fuls of late October air and turns away from the road and towards his house.  He carries the handbag as if it were a baby.  As if it were alive. 

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