The three o'clock washing machine

The laundrette on my street never closes, and I look after it from the flat upstairs: I go down if a machine jams, I change coins, I mop the floor.

It was the mopping that made me notice. At three o'clock sharp, number six switches itself on. The drum turns, full of water and of something dark going round. There is never anyone there. At a quarter to four it spins, and by dawn the door stands open, the drum is empty, and all that's left is the smell: an old soap, the kind they stopped selling years ago.

One night I unplugged it. It came on anyway.

Last night I pressed my forehead to the glass. Through the foam passed a blue sleeve, a round collar, three mother-of-pearl buttons. It was my mother's cardigan. The one we chose to say goodbye to her in.

I didn't open the door. I went up for a chair and sat down in front of it, the way you sit up with someone. Some clothes are never going to be collected: they only come to be washed, so they can go back clean to wherever they are worn now.