In his head, he imagines she is married.
It comforts him to conjure it, in ways he can't explain.
There is a ginger man in a three-piece suit with charming eyes and a wide smile. They were married in a domestic chapel in Leeds and Jackie wore taffeta in ranges of clashing colours.
There's a ginger child, all curls and grins, with her mother's eyes and cheek. They are three, a unit and a force to be reckoned with.
They are domestic, in and out, because that's the way she has always wanted it to be.
She dreams of nothing else but the life she leads, the love she holds and the future, bright and imminent. And she is happy and human and thriving. She is mother and daughter and life.
She is in love, in paradise, in Pete's world.
In his hearts though, he knows she is alone.
There is Mickey and Jackie and Pete and a numbing coldness that the first three can't cure. He feels her shiver and shake with the loss of him.
There are people that come and go, with smiles and words, with propositions and glances but she watches them pass with little notice. She sees only the pinstriped suit, the daft brown hair or the pair of brainy specs, and her heart sinks with extinguished hope. They are reminders, nothing more.
He knows because he sees them too. The blonde ponytail. The shirt with the union flag. The reminders of what he has lost, of what they have lost.
Because of him.
For the love of him.
In his hearts, he knows she's alone. But in his head, he likes to imagine.