Only a car

"It's only a lump of metal," I say to myself.

The flat bed loader has arrived to take away Francis' old car for scrap. There's just enough of a charge in the battery for the man to drive it up the ramp. He parks it facing the only other car there, a white Rover. They are almost nose to nose, massively immobile, like prize fighters squaring up for a final bout.

The car was once my father's. He bought it when he was already ill and, for the first, and last, time in his life, abandoned his 'Which' guides with their careful reckoning up of every feature and instead went against his nature and splashed out, figuring, sensibly, why not?

It was briefly my mother's and then, after her death, it belonged to Francis.

The loader turns round and drives back up the road. As it passes the house, I see that a strand of red and white sticky police tape that secured the boot has worked loose and twists gaily in the slipstream as if we've decorated the car to celebrate its final journey.

I look down, hard. It is, after all, only a car.