I know what you're thinking...

The memory of feeling like this before nudges him, somewhere in the time it takes to pour the whiskey and lift the glass, but before it reaches his lips.

It feels like loss but not his loss; like a reason to give up but being unable to let go. A replication of emotion felt by someone else, someone not here, someone far away and maybe lost. Lost to him.

His eyes close and he tries to catch it, to understand what it means. But it’s been a long day and he’s tired; they drank too much, saw too much, felt too much. His mind aches and he can’t drag himself from this seat; head nods and he feels like he hears a click, his neck complaining from the unbalanced weight of his head, something slotting into place or out of it, moving backwards and forwards like a weathervane in the breeze.

The whiskey never reaches his mouth; it tilts and drips unnoticed from his glass, finds itself blending into the fabric of his armchair. And he dreams of hills, and grass, and the fields of Lancashire, of home.