Still moving...

I haven't found it - the lake place. I keep asking people and they say its not far (that's the ones that actually give me an answer, rather than staring at me blankly or looking straight through me, like I'm dirt) - they say its just a bit further up that road, along that track, round the next corner. But I keep not getting there. The road goes on and on, the track ends in a blur of brambles, the next corner reveals nothing. I've been eating out of bins (god, what have I come to?) . One night when I was curled up in some bushes this old lady found me - she took me home, let me get cleaned up, fed me real food. She was so kind. I could hardly speak. I seem to have lost the power of conversation, I;ve slipped so far out of myself. I grunted my thanks - hoped she could see it in my eyes. She might have wanted me to stay there, but I slipped out from the cool soft sheets of her son's bed early the next morning, really early, and was gone up the road before she could get coffee on the boil and make me not want to leave. I have to keep moving - I don't really know why. Its this strange pull - towards something that feels like home calling me, but it isn't England. It isn't Tim and my mother and a decent cup of tea. Its something more primeval, like the memory of smoke.

Toni has suddenly entered my dreams. She seems so real in them, I've woken up calling her name, expecting to find her there beside me. Maybe this would all make more sense somehow if she was. But I know she's thousands of miles away from me - in body, in heart, in mind. I have to stop thinking about her. Think about anything else. Anything.