I

t’s likely, I’m thinking, that one morning I will wake up and you won’t. There will be no warning. The previous night you will have turned away from me as usual and left me to my reading for another twenty minutes or so. I will have turned off my bedside light, unconcerned, and settled down to sleep. On waking, I will sit up and check for messages on my phone, maybe scan the headlines, letting you have a few more minutes’ kip before we have to get on with the day. A short spell will pass before I venture a ‘good morning’ or a ‘sleep well?’ A small shake will follow, then something more robust. With the sense that something is wrong I will turn you over and the fact of your death will take shape, hitting me like the obvious. I will

I share my full name with one of the bad ones. One everybody recognises. The neighbours. The smell. The drains. The trophies kept in the fridge

need to do a couple of things immediately. The materials needed for my next steps are safely tucked away in my side of the wardrobe. There will be no need to check. In the meantime, carefully, respectfully, I will ease myself out of bed as if I am worried about your being disturbed. Granting you a dignity in death that I oftentimes forgot to afford you in life. Then, dressing gown on, I will leave the bedroom and make for the boiler on the landing. There I will

Luckily none of the atrocities happened . . . sorry, they were not discovered . . . until I had left school. Imagine that! Take any embarrassment I have experienced in my adult life and times that by a significant number

turn off the heating in the hallway, open the front door just enough so that a moderate breeze or firm knock will see it wide open. I imagine a neighbour, an Amazon delivery driver, a police officer coming in and calling up the stairs. Then make my way to the kitchen. I will drink a glass of water and perhaps wish there was a bottle of booze I could take a slug from. But I don’t think I will

The day when the news first hits, it’s over at long last, relief in the region, disgust at the fresh horrors, at last we know say some parents, how did this happen under the noses of the neighbours/family/police

require much in the way of Dutch courage to sit beside you, resting my back against our headboard, slip that hidden plastic bag that is the perfect size and strength over my head and fix it tight around my neck with my old school tie. But first I will

Then the horror that strikes very few of us. How many? A hundred or so, I believe. Our lives have to go on, changed forever. What innocents we had been till that morning

place the empty glass in the sink and I will walk along the hallway to our living room, check the radiator hasn’t come on, unlock and open the long glass doors that lead on to our garden. These I will fling wide, letting the morning air fill the house. Will I look out at the grass, the bushes, our tree? No. In fact, I see myself carrying out all these tasks with eyes deliberately out of focus. I won’t wish to take anything in. Anyway

Pretending to find it amusing, hearing every imaginable joke over and over again. Taking offense, giving offense, ignoring, getting in the first shot, putting it out there, puzzlement and feigned ignorance. Nothing helps

it’s just as likely, I’m thinking, that I will enter a roundabout without paying due care. Perhaps I will have one of those peripheral visual hallucinations that have begun to plague me . . . a cat or a small dinosaur . . . You will be doing your usual, just jabbering away in the passenger seat about matters that are none of my concern, can never hold my interest. Or hang on a minute. Surely

The before and after. The plates shift, a mountain range rises cutting off my short past from my endless future

one day I will turn up for the results of some test or other and be dealt a piece of devastating news. I will be alone with the doctor, as is my custom. I have no time for those who say they need support on these occasions, have spent the past hour silently scoffing at them in the corridor outside the office. Handholding. Weeping, some of them. I will ask how long and receive the doom-laden answer phlegmatically. At that moment I will decide to refuse all treatment. Simultaneously, I will decide not to tell you. Especially as

People have never known what to say. Whether to ignore, whether to acknowledge, whether to make a small joke or empathise, feel my discomfort. Did I notice the double take? People, they worry. People, they can’t wait to rush home and tell

it’s more than likely, I’m thinking, that it’s you that will be driving and I will be asleep in the passenger seat, a little worse for wear, and it’s your mind that will wander because there is no stimulation coming from my direction. You need me to keep you engaged with the world around you. You’ve always been that way. Yes, there is no reason that I will be to blame. It will be all your fault. You will be daydreaming. You’ve never undertstood

The head in the fridge. Everybody fixates on the head in the fridge

but I will be pretty pleased with myself when I imagine responding to your enquiry about the results with a breezy, ‘Nothing to report. Same old same old. Do less of this, do more of that.’ You will be oblivious

From time to time I come across somebody similarly, but not exactly, afflicted. We exchange a look that says ‘don’t think you understand . . . my guy is worse than your guy because he is from this country/in that movie/more recent/more disgusting/still alive’ . . . it’s a complicated exchange

to my heroism, not realise that I am sparing your feelings, taking away all that anxiety, all that pain. Saving myself, too, from all that dreary talk. During the short time that follows my fatal diagnosis you will ask me to do many normal things. There will be nails and screws, pipes and wrenches, mowing and dusting, parcels to package and deliver to friends I will never see again. I hug these sweet thoughts tightly, keep them close. I realise that I could, if I wished to reveal my upcoming agony, cry off from the mundane. This is not how anybody would choose to spend their final days, is it? But I will be struck by my own bravery, decency and sacrifice to such a degree that I will carry out my little chores cheerfully. You may think something is going on as I have never behaved in this uncomplaining manner before. I will

I have considered contacting the others in the (exact) same position. To find out if my response is in, you know, proportion. I was going to say those nearest to me in age but, of course, there are no younger versions. No parent would

never stop blaming myself for letting you drive when I know how your mind wanders when I am not conscious enough to engage it. What kind of idiot does that? The same kind of idiot who lets me drink when we go out just so they can complain about it later. Well, thanks to you, this time there will be no later. I will

Sometimes I am unable to attend a work meeting and my absence is noted in the minutes. Apologies . . . Who isn’t going to laugh at that? It was too late to change it. There was never any question: I was stuck with it. It was me as well as him

be worried, of course, about when to spill the beans, confess that I have been soldiering on bravely for these past two, three, four months but now the time has come when I can no longer disguise my discomfort, pain, weakness, need for consolation. The look you give me at this point will delight me. Your admiration, your gratitude, your warmth, will help to ease me to my ending, knowing that I did the right thing, that I showed my love and consideration for you in the depths of my dying. I will ponder the meaning of in sickness and in health, understanding it now as an internal message and not, as suspected, a prosaic duty of care. But, my God, it’s better

It’s the one area of life where time does not pass. It never goes away. No sooner has one generation faded and forgotten than another is brought to life by fucking Netflix

than the likelihood, I’m thinking, that we will miss the boat, me and you. Opportunities to make a choice for ourselves will come and go as we think, maybe next time . . . That’s how we find ourselves side by side propped up on oversized plastic-backed beige armchairs in what looks to be a 1950s conservatory. Opposite us sit our mirror images, open-mouthed, closed eyes, a forgotten lowbrow magazine resting on their laps. There is a smell of mince in the air. High in the corner a hyperactive young cunt is yelling from the TV that we could win something or other. Nobody is watching him. Only one or two can even hear him. It is 10.30 in the morning and it feels as if the day will never end. I will

What could I have been if he hadn’t got there before me? Because of his reality then any good I might have done has been diluted by who did it. Any bad has paled in comparison

slip into my old parka in the dead of night. Or what if

I’m on high alert.. The notorious photo can appear at any time and in any company. The office. The gym. The dentist. Any excuse for them to wheel it out once more is a good excuse. The marriage of the survivor. The pool table, the satellite tv, the access to drugs, phones, the internet, his lover the guard tells all. The worst since. Fucking Netflix

it's me that has to accompany you to that chilly hospital corridor? It’s me that has to hold your hand, sitting across the desk from a doctor that seems reluctant to look up from his notes. You get the bad news and I get to play the dutiful one, the selfless companion that does everything to ensure that your final days are filled with light and compassion. Not having to

I did consider adopting a jaunty nickname but it would never fly. My jauntiness died in those drains

make the walk down to the beach in the dark and cold, stand there stuffing pebbles into the parka’s saddlebag pockets, wade out into the waves under the moon like some unhappy genius. And that will never happen because

Those shocking shop window moments. That stop me in my tracks. See the floppy schoolboy fringe and that slope to the shoulders as if this guy is trying to hide inside his own body. The glassiness in the eyes that was captured in that photo has become mine. I will shave my head and stand up a little straighter for a bit but soon the hair grows back, the posture crumbles. He seeps back in

it is more than likely, I think, that one day I will simply not be around. The open door will bring in a neighbour, that Amazon delivery driver, the police, a burglar. They will enter the silent house, walk down the empty hall, call out is anybody here, feel its chill, choke on the clouds of sickly sweet air freshener. They will see a desolate living room and beyond that a garden that seems forlorn, blighted. Is blighted. They will back up and enter the kitchen and see the yellow post-note on the fridge that reads DO NOT OPEN