To Bentley

Whenever I pass a skip in the street I have to look in. It's compulsive. People don't understand why until they look themselves; you can find all sorts of treasures in skips if you look hard enough.

It started when I was small. I used to do a circuit of the house, rummaging through the bins in every room. Funnily enough, I can't remember a single item salvaged in my rounds; I think the pleasure was more from the scavenging itself than from anything I discovered. It's almost like the thrill of the hunt. To this day I enjoy finding things much more than I enjoy buying things.

So one day I was walking along and I spotted a briefcase poking out of the end of a skip. I picked it up and tried opening it but it was locked. Like a child with a Christmas present, I shook the briefcase and, to my delight, it rattled.

When I got home I worked my way through the codes and discovered with a satisfying clunk that it opened at 951 (someone's date of birth, perhaps: 1951?). The only thing inside the briefcase, apart from a lot of dust, was a photo: two young boys, seemingly photographed at school. Brothers? The blond brother appears to have been clipped off in the second photograph. On the back there is ‘Bentley' written in blue biro. Old-fashioned handwriting. There is also a strip of double-sided sticky tape on the back, though it has never been used. Could this mean that the photo was disregarded? Perhaps it is actually the other brother who has been clipped off. My thoughts continued in this way, questioning everything that I found.

There is something about the photo that holds my attention. When I close my eyes that night I see the boys' faces in the darkness. I don't sleep well. The next day I carry the photo in my pocket. The strangest thing is my mounting suspicion that I'm not the first person to find this briefcase, though I cannot put my finger on why I believe this to be true.

The next day I jump at every sudden noise and am convinced at several points that I'm being followed. I look up Bentley in the phone book but get scared I'm being obsessive. I sit in a café all day and drink too much coffee. Then I decide the hunt must go on; I can feel it building up to something and must find out what.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and jumped out of your skin, believing a coat hanging on a wardrobe to be a figure standing at your bedside? I feel like that now, but the figure is a real man and his name is Bentley. We each have our own Bentley, our own detective story that affects us so deeply we wish we could stop turning the pages.

I'm sure I'm being followed now, but I've found Bentley and it's too late to turn back. I don't know who I write this to but I'm afraid of saying too much. This tale should end where it began: either with a mystery or on a rubbish heap.