He is there, drinking bad coffee, every weekday at the same time.
He sometimes has the opportunity to see her arrive in the mornings, but that is very much hit and miss. There are occasions when she walks from the station, on others she is dropped off by him. He sees her kissed goodbye, by her husband. He has seen him from time to time, and he looks to be a good sort. He hopes so. It is mostly the late afternoons that he can rely on. He watches, as the building’s office workers stream out onto the street. Some cross to the café where he sits, some turn left along the pavement, some turn right. She turns right. She always looks beautiful; no different from the woman he knew a decade ago. Of course, he still loves her.
As he sits by the window in the gloomy coffee shop, sipping on the worst kind of coffee, waiting for her to appear, he often reflects on the fact that she would no longer recognise him. His time overseas, the Taliban insurgency and the dreadful explosion that brought him home early, have all put paid to that possibility. His face received the worst of it. The heavy beard and tinted glasses help him get out in public with minimum discomfort.
She no doubt thinks he is dead. They had been courting for two years when he was called up. Of course, the letters he sent during the first few weeks were the last contact. Nothing since then. He feels sure she would have waited for a while, but life moves on.
Now, he comes here and sits, and waits.
He considers himself to be a stalker of the most decent kind.