'Dancing Queen' by Bronwen Griffiths

It’s been two weeks that I’m sleeping under a motorway bridge with its piss-stink and loud-mouthed graffiti. No one else here because of the freeze-cold and needling rain. But one of these nights someone will turn up and I won’t feel safe and I’ll have to find another place.

In the daytime I walk into town and beg but the pickings are meagre and I don’t know how much longer I can survive. Going back is not an option. And I like it here. The sound of the traffic, the tyres swishing on the wet road, comfort me like a lullaby.

Sometimes I shout to hear my voice and the bridge shouts with me. It’s only an echo but it feels like company. The bridge is my cathedral too. I visited a cathedral once. A holy place my mother said. Nothing holy about our family.

I lie back in my sleeping bag but I’m lonesome tonight and I shout a hello like I’ve done before. There’s hello in return but it’s not my voice.

‘Who’s there?’, I shout, loud as I can.

‘Me,’ a voice booms. ‘The bridge. I get lonely too. Can you sing? I’ve never heard you sing.’

I’m a little shocked but I don’t show it. ‘Dancing Queen,’ I say. 'My Nan used to sing that. Do you know it?’

‘You lead and I’ll follow.’

We sing along together, the bridge and I, and over the weeks that follow we find new songs. The bridge protects me, as long as it takes, he says.