I Bought A Camper And Inherited The Previous Owner's Notebook

The camper was two thousand and a bit, sold by a woman clearing out her late brother's things. She was brisk and sad and wanted it gone before the weekend.

Under the bench seat, taped to the underside with parcel tape, was a school exercise book.

Thirty-one entries. Each one a date, a time, and one word. Some of the words are places — "Culvert". "Ridge". Some are objects — "Battery". "Kettle". Some are just "Again".

The dates run from 2009 to 2017, and they cluster. Six in one autumn. Nothing for two years. Then four in a fortnight.

The times are all between 01:40 and 03:10.

I would have thrown it out. I nearly did. But the last entry is not in his handwriting. His is small and slanted and gets worse when he is in a hurry, which you can see, because some entries are shaky.

The last one is round and even, and it takes up two lines, and it says: THEY ARE FINE ABOUT IT. YOU CAN STOP WRITING NOW.

It is dated four months after his death.

I rang his sister. This is the part I feel worst about, because she had been kind to me and I dragged her back into it. I described the book. There was a long pause and then she said, "Is it the exercise book with the blue cover?"

She knew about it. She said he had shown it to her once, drunk, at a wedding, and had told her that when he slept in the camper "they came and were polite", and that writing it down "kept it to a visit and not a stay". She had told him to see somebody. He had laughed and never mentioned it again.

She did not know about the last entry. She asked me to read it twice. Then she asked me not to call again, and I have not.

I have slept in the camper eleven times now. Nothing has happened. I want to be very clear that nothing has happened.

But I bought a new exercise book and put it under the bench seat, taped in the same place, because the alternative was lying awake deciding whether not writing counts as fighting it.

I have written nothing in it. It is there. It is enough for me that it is there.