Three times.
At nineteen he spent a night at the county bus station. Minus six, and they cleared the waiting hall at four. Somebody took off a coat and gave it to him and said bring it back tomorrow morning, I'll be here.
He waited until midday. Nobody came.
At thirty-four a section of scaffold came down on a site and they carried him to the roadside, and somebody put a coat over him. He asked the foreman afterwards. The foreman said there was no such man on the crew, all nineteen who signed in that day were accounted for.
At fifty-one, the third time.
All three were the same coat.
He knows it. There is a patch inside the right cuff, sewn with a running square stitch that goes round on itself — nobody sews like that now. The second button on the left is a shade darker than the others; it was replaced.
He checked all of that the second time. Not one detail out.
The third time he did not give it back. He hung it in the wardrobe and left it there six months.
One day he felt something hard in the lining, the size of a thumbnail, catching under his fingers.
He unpicked seven or eight stitches and worked it out. A piece of paper, folded in four, very brittle.
Three dates on it. The first two were the day he was nineteen and the day he was thirty-four.
The third has not come yet.