bit his lip. ‘Nathan? Uh … a month.’
‘How did he look?’
‘I think he looked fine.’
Ronny was clearly delighted, but he spoke with an element of restraint. ‘Well that’s good then.’
‘So …’ the other Ronny seemed genuinely interested, ‘when was the last time you saw him?’
‘Ten years ago.’
The other Ronny mulled this over for a while and then said, ‘I’ve got a whole family somewhere that I’ve never even met. Brothers and sisters. All lost.’
Ronny didn’t want to appear competitive so he laboriously adjusted his collar in an attempt to distance himself. ‘That’s a great pity,’ he said finally, ‘luckily I have no sisters.’
The other Ronny looked serious. ‘Yes, that is a relief.’
‘It is?’
Ronny was bemused. The other Ronny gazed up at the sky. It had begun to rain again. He turned his attention back to Ronny. ‘There’s this famous story about a man who meets someone purely by accident but the more they find out about each other the more they realize that they have things in common until finally they realize that they are the same person. I don’t know who wrote the story.’
Ronny took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t a story. It was a play. It’s by Ionesco. And what happens is that the two men realize that they have the same life but that they are in fact different people.’
‘Oh. Right.’
The other Ronny suppressed a grimace. He was clearly dissatisfied with this piece of clarification.
‘Which makes the whole thing even more absurd.’ Ronny added, as an afterthought, ‘anyway …’ He pulled off his hat, ‘we don’t look alike.’
Without his hat Ronny resembled a king prawn, fully processed; legs gone, shell gone, ready for serving, soft and pink and pale and smooth. Pure and unadorned.
His was a gentle face, a complex mixture of blankness and fullness. He was plain as a boiled sweet, but his eyes were deep, complex and dark-ringed, and his lashless lids were swollen. His irises were the mellow, golden brown of raw cane sugar.
‘You’ve got no hair.’
‘No.’
‘Are you ill?’
‘Alopecia.’
It began raining harder. Ronny put his hat back on again. The other Ronny hunched up his shoulders to keep the rain from dripping down his neck. ‘Did you get here by car?’
Ronny nodded. ‘Green Volvo. I parked on the hard shoulder.’
‘That’s illegal.’
‘Yes.’
‘Unless you broke down.’
‘No. The car’s fine. I stopped because I thought you might be intending to jump.’
‘Me?’ The other Ronny looked flabbergasted. ‘From this bridge?’
Ronny felt embarrassed. To hide it he said quickly, ‘I’m on my way to work. I’m in Tottenham for a while.’
The other Ronny didn’t seem to register.
‘So …’ Ronny struggled, ‘uh … what’s in the box then?’
‘The box?’ The other Ronny looked down. ‘This box?’
‘Yes.’
The box was approximately a foot and a half square and firmly sealed with strong brown tape.
The other Ronny paused and then smiled. ‘My soul.’
‘Your soul?’ Ronny didn’t like this kind of talk. He didn’t like talk of souls.
Ronny smiled even wider. ‘I’m kidding.’
Then he added softly, without prompting and without feeling, ‘I used to live on Claremont Road. In a squat. Now it’s gone. They built a link road over it. So I decided to give myself up to the road. To many roads. And now I’m on the motorway. I’m trying to find out what I can get back from it. I’ve been waving from here for three weeks.’
Ronny was pleased to have had his first question answered at last. By way of recompense he said, ‘I live on the Isle of Sheppey. By the sea. Not the sea, really, the channel.’
The other Ronny nodded. ‘Yes, Sheppey.’
‘You know it?’ Ronny strained to think of reasons why a person would go to Sheppey.
‘Did you pass through to catch the ferry?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a keen birdwatcher?’
‘No.’
He paused for a moment. ‘Were you in prison there?’
The other Ronny smiled and said, ‘I know someone who lives there.’
Ronny checked his watch. ‘I’d better be off.’
He proffered the other Ronny his hand to shake. He wanted to seal this interlude, formally. He was pleased with it but he wanted it contained.
The other Ronny couldn’t shake his hand.
‘I can’t shake your hand,’ he said gently, ‘I’m still holding the wasp.’
‘So you’re left-handed,’ Ronny said, ‘like me.’
‘No. I’m right-handed, it’s just that I do everything with my left hand.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s one of my projects.’
Ronny was perplexed. He transformed his attempted shake into a little wave. ‘Well, it was nice to meet you.’
‘Yes.’
He headed over towards the embankment. He didn’t turn around again. If he had, he would have seen the other Ronny go and bury his wasp in the soil at the edge of the bridge and then construct, one-handed and with considerable difficulty, a small marker out of a lolly stick and a piece of dried grass. Next he would have seen him walk back to the centre of the bridge and wash his hands in a puddle.
When he’d completed his tasks, however, instead of returning to his original post, the other Ronny moved to the opposite side of the bridge, the side facing into London, and stood and gazed down the hard shoulder. He saw Ronny climb into his green Volvo, indicate, pull off.
He felt an impulse to wave but defeated it. Instead he touched the wrist of his right hand with his left hand as if expecting to find something
