Bad Intentions

CHAPTER 15

Dear diary,

I’ve started looking at people as if seeing them for the first time. When I go out for a walk in the hospital park, I notice that they are lit differently. It’s something to do with the way the sun hits them, it makes their faces glow. That guy on the bicycle, for example, who passed me this morning, he would never have acted as carelessly as I did. He would have taken responsibility and done the right thing. I could see it in his eyes and in the way he held his head. Because he knows he is worth something, he knows that he is a good person. In his life there are clear rules which he always follows. The old lady holding the granny trolley who came out of the shop, she is bound to be the sort who helps insects to their freedom. And the shop assistant in the baker’s where I bought rolls yesterday, the girl with the round cheeks, she is goodness itself. I used to be one of them. Once I belonged to this exclusive group of people with a clear conscience. It’s hard to look people in the eye. My voice has lost its power. I’m waiting for the axe to fall, and I know it will. How quickly it can change, the life we think has been marked out for us. We start the journey with good intentions, the gift our parents bequeathed us. And then, someone snaps their fingers and we find ourselves sidetracked; we end up in a foreign country. Suddenly we think differently about everything, we are in alien territory and other rules apply there. I no longer recognise my own life. I have lost my way, and the thing that happened is not fading away, either. I’m almost too scared to open a newspaper or switch on the radio because of what they might say and how much they will have found out. It’s a miracle that I still walk around a free man.