Why don't you ask him?

Despite the efforts of his brothers, school friends, drinking buddies, and later a wife, children and then grandchildren, Solitus Ditch only ever talked to trees.

He'd slip out of the house in the evenings and walk down to the green, and sit against the bark for hours, his low murmur frightening people along the path.

I don't know what he told his wife.

In the mornings, he looked perfectly ordinary as he took the window seat at the Sunstar cafe on Gillespie Road. When one morning he wasn't there for his fry up, I assumed that he must have died. I forgot all about him.

But then a few weeks later, walking past on my way to work, I saw him in his usual seat with his full english, in his grey anorak, staring ahead as he always did, looking at nothing and no one.

I had never spoken to him, but I felt I should celebrate the fact that he wasn't dead, after all. I went into the cafe and ordered a cup of tea. He was reading his newspaper. I was wondering if I could say something to him, like "Morning" or "Hello there," to acknowledge the fact that we'd lived on the same street for twenty years, when his face was transformed by a look of wild terror and agony.

His hands went stiff and white on the table. A tear slid down his cheek, and his jaw started to shake. I thought he might be having a heart attack. After a few minutes, he got up and started to shuffle out of the door, as if he was in a trance.

"Hey!"

the waiter shouted. "Full English yeah and a tea? Four pounds sixty yeah?"

But he just kept walking like the dead.

I went over and looked at the newspaper. Page 7 had a little story. A new swimming pool and leisure centre was been built on the fields. There was a photograph with a computer generated image of what it would look like. Camberwell SkyPark.

"Why does he care about those trees?" I asked Alden later.
"It's always been the same three."
"The same three?"
"The same three trees he sits under.
"Can't he just find new trees?"
"Why don't you ask him?"