He knew they were staring. Could feel their eyes burning the back of his neck. Searing shame flooded his cheeks. If only they could know…if only they could see. Then they wouldn't be so quick to judge. He lunged at them, muttering, stuttering, waving his arms at them like a crazed conductor directing an orchestra that was not there. Would never be there. Kicking up the dust, he stumbled in an aimless dance, sending the scent of newly clipped grass, body odour and cigarettes wafting into the summer evening. A madman. The kids stared, giggled, shrill voices shredding the heavy air, pointing and laughing, before they scuttled away to their mothers, back to their world of love and warmth. He gazed after them, an echo of wistfulness in his eyes, a memory looming out of the fog of alcohol and cigarettes that constantly cloaked his mind.

A beautiful wife. 3 young children. A picture-perfect life, crisp and glossy as a magazine. It had been so easy, so wonderful. So wonderful. But, as he had learnt, amidst a bitter concoction of salty tears and alcohol, of court cases and lonely nights spent huddled in a ragged bundle, life so often made a cruel mockery of joy and laughter.

He had known it as he watched her hair fall out, skull gleaming pale blue beneath hospital lights, as he breathed the harsh smell of hospital disinfectant that clung to everything, even at home. He had known it as he saw her become a skeleton, watched sharp bones protrude from beneath papyrus skin, dry and lifeless, heard rattling breaths shudder through raw lungs and kissed dead lips of purple-grey. He had known it as he held his children, felt their tears soak through his t-shirt, soak through his skin and into his heart. He had known it it as he shouldered the coffin, grief-bent and aching.

And the ache had never left. It had spread, a virus of the mind, a hallucination of the soul. Had driven him love-blind, listless. Had transformed him, through a kind of reverse metamorphosis....he had shrunk in on himself, wrapped in a cocoon of tattered cloth and tattered thoughts. Unrecognisable. Unrecognised. Invisible.

And he had somehow become one of the desperate. Eyes drooping with bloodshot exhaustion...grey hair, grey teeth, grey face. A mass of purple scarring, track marks that mapped his self-hatred. But they did not know. Those people that hurried past, their eyes snatching at his, in the briefest of moments, then scuttling away. As though guilty at what they had seen. Contact with an undesirable. Seeming to hold their breath as they passed. Afraid of contagion...being infected by misfortune. Sometimes tossing coins, a furtive flick of the wrist, never looking.

And never truly seeing.