Three panes missing from a window above a single bed, birds flying in and out of a cabin — jackdaw central — some recalcitrant flies, too.

I’ll describe it for you. Four corners. Standard. The single bed in one, bunk beds in the other, desk and the door. Four corners. Clockwise better? Ok then bed desk bunks door. Four corners.

The mattresses for the bunks still have the plastic on, the label John Lewis. Specially designed to support growing bodies. There are shelves of books above the window. The Snow Dragon. The Gospel of Wealth. Stig of the Dump. Flowers of Evil. Blood & Fire. The Longest Silence. Tom Waits On Tom Waits. The Golden Bough. Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Lorca’s Collected Poems. Successful Sea Trout Angling. Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw. Folk Tales of the British Isles. Yeats’s Poems. Arthur Miller: A Life. Some Penguin Postcards — ‘One Hundred Writers in One Box’ — three of them loose (George Orwell, Jack Kerouac and Tennessee Williams).

In a metal cabinet next to the desk I find a Roberts radio, two egg cups, a bottle opener, a stainless steel water jug, a screwdriver, a Stanley knife, a receipt from Little Paris for £590 — CUSTOMER NOT PRESENT — and on the back, handwritten, Thank you very much! Something in illegible French. On top of the cabinet there’s £2.60 — made up of silvers and an old pound coin. In the desk drawer there’s an invoice for a gothic helmet lamp in gunmetal and wallpaper in ‘Voysey Trellis Blue’ from Robert Kime for £2,492.01. There are some earphones to go with a child’s drawing — a sentimental self-portrait, unsigned — black grate polish and a packet of Smints. On a small piece of card, again handwritten albeit in different handwriting, They rescue the Finkels.

I feel like I’m chasing a shadow — a ghost of a life once lived.

There’s a notepad on the desk, pages blank save for the first. I don’t understand. It’s a schedule or daily planner. Wake up then lift weights. Shower then dress. Breakfast then get the kids up — two girls — a house full of women — and ready for school. Writing in here from 10 till five — a writer in a box — another one — then after that yoga. Next dinner then funzies — not my words — I’m quoting — no such thing as original genius — and that’s not mine either — before bedtime at 11.

I’m five-years sober. Suppose you want me to tell you why — bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you. This isn’t that kind of story. This is a story about fragments, the whole and the sum and the parts. This is a story about failing to meet and falling apart.

This is a story about the last man in here.