Years after the fallout with Karl, I was riding up an escalator in a London Underground station when my phone buzzed. The message was short.
Perry
Will died yesterday. He was fighting cancer.
— Karl
I was motionaless, my body being pulled up on the escalator as i felt my body was going down. Because the truth is, I owed Will everything.
Without him I probably wouldn’t have fallen into puppetry at all. No obsession. No reaching out to strangers. No compulsion to keep writing and trying to come up with stories without common sense says stop. He was the starting point. The permission slip.
I tried to call Karl straight away when i got out of the station. I needed to speak. He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t.
After that we drifted back into contact. He seemed different. Softer. Grief will do that to people. At least at first. He would drop bread crumbs that he knew I wanted. He didn't give me the address of the funeral or the address of the widow to send flowers. But he did send me over photos of the book of service. Plus asked if I wanted to write a story, which I did. I'm not sure if it was ever handed over. But I did write something. I’m genuinely grateful for at least being informed. It mattered.
Without really noticing, I slipped back into the same role I’d played before — listening, holding space, being available. His therapist again.
Karl had moved north by then to be closer to family. He wasn’t in London anymore. He said he was happy. Or at least… better.
A few months later he offered to work on some puppet bodies for me. So I sent three up to him. He asked me to order parts through his contacts, which I did. He said he’d do the work for free. A generous offer.
Two years passed. Then three. Nothing.
One day he rang and told me he was going to start charging me for storage — storage for puppets he’d volunteered to work on. So I booked a courier that same day and had them shipped back. His tone changed immediately.
I paid him for the paintwork he’d done. Honestly, it wasn’t great. I ended up paying someone else to redo it properly.
And that was the end of it. No argument. No dramatic falling-out. Just the quiet realisation that some people don’t mentor — they occupy space.