Five weeks had passed since Jake had left the house. It had all been a blur. He had moved into a small bed-sit in Hawthorn Street behind the market square in town. His window looked towards the rear of the bank. He hated living there but it was all he could get in a hurry. Hated living there because he knew Vicky’s new lover worked there beside her. He had been right; the man he had seen with Vicky was the new manager. Information had filtered down through their mutual friends. They hadn’t wanted to tell him, but Jake had led them to believe it was okay - everything was fine. He was on an even keel and it was just one of those things…
Inside, Jake was broken. He wanted to be with her so very much, wanted to hold her, needed to love her and be near to her. But now he had nothing left but the precious memories deep inside his head. That was something that they could never take away from him…ever. Jake had believed in the love she had given him. Thought it would last a whole lifetime, and he had taken a great deal of comfort in the belief that they would always be together.
Now he had lost direction; he was stumbling about in the dark and no amount of army training could help him out of the situation in which he now found himself in. Jake didn’t know how or why it had happened. It had crept up on him and he certainly hadn’t seen it coming. But that’s how it goes. Jake never thought for one minute it would ever be his name on the ticket. Had the affair been going on while they where together? He hadn’t a clue. When had it started? That was another mystery. Jake hadn’t spoken to Vicky since the split, and he didn’t want to. He had gone back to the house the very next day while she was at work and removed all trace of himself ever having been there. It proved to be one of the hardest days of his life. He went over the place with a fine toothcomb, and when he had finished, forensics would’ve been hard pressed to find any evidence that Jake Silverman had ever lived there.
After clearing the house in a very military way, Jake had sat outside in the sunshine. A thousand thoughts had rushed through his head. He held the house keys in his hands - her house keys now - and he knew full well that once he let them fall onto the floor through the letter box there would be no going back. The inevitability of it all made him sit there for almost a full hour. He looked up at King’s Point Mol, but it couldn’t give him any of the comfort that he so desperately sought. The answer was not up there, it was inside his own head. But at that exact moment he just couldn’t see it…. Or didn’t want to. Jake couldn’t let them go, he just couldn’t… But he knew he had to. As they dropped onto the wooden floor he knew he would never again deliver anything through another letterbox… His days as a postman were over… Forever.