Here it is. Here is the drive. Here is the car. The sight of these things registers first on my eyes, and then in my throat and stomach, some tiny part of each object passing through my eyes and into my body through a route as yet unmapped by human endeavour, but there they are, these things, now in my stomach - the drive, the fence, the fig tree, the car, the back door of the car, in the raised position, the suitcases and bags and, yes, the folded items in the back of the car, all these things find their way through my eyes, and down my throat, and into my stomach, and I can feel them knocking on the door of my bowels, let us in, let us in, they are saying, we are stuck, we need to find a way through, open up or we'll force our way through, this is what they are saying, and now I am walking like an automaton, because some of the compartments of my mind are shutting off like doors in the hold of a torpedoed ship, I am moving automatically, moving around the side of the house, gliding around the side of the house, on the terrace now, no sign of anybody in the garden, on the terrace now, looking at the table on the terrace, looking at the two coffee mugs on the table.

I stand on the terrace.

I take two steps, and then I take two steps back.

Focus! I will knock on the door and I will see her and we will talk and I will hug my little boy and I will go down the road with my little boy and we will go to the park, where I have arranged to meet some people, a mother and her daughter, and we will have a picnic, and everything will be fine. Fine! And then my little boy and the mother of my little boy will go on holiday, and I will not go on holiday, I will go to my office. And the days will go by, and one day I will get a postcard.

Will I get a postcard?

I knock on the door. There is no answer. I knock again.

Still no answer.

I open the door and walk in. I take in the table, the shelf of cookery books, the things on the ledge behind the taps, and some of the things have been on this ledge since before we split up, and this gives me an obscure sense of comfort, and then a corresponding sense of discomfort as I realise that one day I will walk into this kitchen and these things, these exact things, the small containers and objects, the screw that had fallen on the floor and rolled under the fridge, these things will not be there, and I will see new things, new plates and mugs, possibly even a new table, and the thought of this, right now, is devastating.

And suddenly, quite suddenly, she is here, in the kitchen, it is her, and the image of her that now exists on my retina seems to grow, blocking everything else out, or rather rendering it - the vista consisting of walls, table, chairs, worktops, floorboards, windows - into a fractured, Cubist version of itself, planes and surfaces no longer making sense, and now she is saying something, and I am looking beyond her shoulder at the bowl of cat biscuits in the corner, and I know that what dogs need is raw meaty bones, and the mother of my little boy is saying something, and I am replying, she is talking, I must focus, I must focus, and now I look at the mother of my little boy, and our eyes meet for a moment, and I feel as if we are separated by a thick piece of glass, like the scene in White Squall just before the ship sinks, when the two lovers, Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, can see each other through the porthole, and I want to shout: Do you know who this is? This is me! Can't you see it's me! I love you!

I want to say: It's me!

And: What went wrong?

And: Can't we work things out?

And: I miss you.

And: I will change.

And: I will try to change.

And: I know I've said it before.

And: Of course I'm aware of that.

And: That was not the real me.

And: My work is going really well.

And: I've cracked it!

And: Raw, meaty bones.

And: This is just the start.

And: Of course I'm serious.

And: Raw, meaty bones is just the start!

And: I'm back on track.

And: I'm having lots of ideas!

And: I've turned the corner.

And: This time it will be different.

And: This is my time.

And: This is my time, I tell you!

And: The age of me!

And: I can feel it!

And: I really can!

And: This time next year, I will be a motivational speaker!

And: You had better believe it!

And: Can't you see it in me?

I want to say these things but I don't, I just stand there, feeling feverish and ill, trying to maintain the appearance of calm, I stand there, flushed and aching, nodules of pain jabbing at my bowel, my stomach fluttering, my heart flapping, my temples pounding - I stand there, I watch her mouth moving and talking, and my mouth talks back, and the moment of our eyes meeting is over, and I believe now that the whole thing is over, whatever happened between us is over, the actual relationship is over, and I wish things were different, and I wish I had behaved differently, I wish I'd been more considerate, I wish I'd been on time more often, because I was always late, five minutes here, ten minutes there, it was some kind of psychological problem, I was always finding things to do when I was in a hurry, I would be just about to leave and suddenly remember I had to write down a phone number, or send an e-mail, or check to see that my washing machine was switched off, or that I had not left the cooker on, or the fridge open, or that I had to clean my teeth, and then I'd start to clean my teeth and realise I should have flossed them first, so I would then floss them, and then I'd rush along the street, and arrive sweaty and dishevelled, having forgotten something in my hurry - yes, I wish I had not spent so much time procrastinating, I wish I'd bought more flowers, I wish I had not spent so much time dreaming, I wish I'd been fitter, I wish I'd woken up every morning fresh and sprightly instead of grumpy and hungover, I wish I had sorted out my finances, I wish I had not started to tell white lies about my finances, I wish I'd been clean and tidy and reliable from the start, instead of always having to catch up, and make up the shortfall with gestures, such as spending five hours cleaning the entire house, and then explaining that this is what I had done, because when you start doing things not because you think they need doing but because you want to be seen to have done them, you're sunk; I wish, in other words, that I did not have so much psychological baggage, and I also wish I had not had so many past relationships, so many near-misses, so many points of comparison - what I wish most is that we were younger, that we had not aged, that I had, not just the hair and teeth and gums of a much younger man, but that I was a much younger man, that I was 27, not 47, and I know that I do not look bad for my age, and I know that I could eat fruit and porridge and green vegetables, and I know that I could have better teeth, could have a light tan, could have the slightly enlarged moles on my back and chest painlessly removed, could have laser eye surgery and liposuction, could live healthily for another 40 years, it's more than possible, it's even likely, but none of this is the same as being young and uncorrupted by experience, I used to welcome experience, used to want to build up a big store of memories, lovers notched, places travelled, people met, drugs taken, I used to want to cram all this in for some reason, I suppose I wanted to put my past in the bank as a hedge against the present, and I can see now that this was too effective, that the past won, the past somehow overpowered me and is now looming over me, and as I'm processing this thought my little boy runs into the kitchen and says, “Daddy!” and I open my arms and he opens his arms and I pick him up, and he puts his arms around my neck and I look into his face and he's smiling.

© William Leith 2008

Extracted from William Leith's Bits of Me are Falling Apart to be published by Bloomsbury on August 4, £10.99
Available from Times BooksFirst for £9:89, free p&p. 0870 1608080 timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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