What happened, and what is still happening

Your hands are in the water and the window has gone dark over the sink.

You have been going over it again. You go over it most days, somewhere in the day, and this is one of the places it happens.

That going over is the one thing left that takes it seriously. Everybody else has stopped. Nothing in this chapter is asking you to stop, now or later.

One thing before anything else.

If what you go over is what somebody did to you, that is chapter 17, and nothing in this one asks anybody to leave anything out.

There are two separate things in what you go over, and they sit in different times.

The first is what happened. You left the room. You said it in front of the children. You were not there on the Tuesday. Whatever it is, it is finished — it finished at the time, and nothing has been added to it since.

The second is what you say about yourself afterwards. Not I left the room, but I am the sort of man who leaves the room. That one is not in the past at all. It is in the present tense, and it is being said now, at the sink, with the water running.

If none of this is recognisable — if what arrives is not in words at all, just a settled thing about yourself with no sentence attached — then this chapter may not be for you, and nothing is lost by going on to the next one.

Here is the part that has to be said plainly, because the easy version would be a lie.

The second thing may be true. You may well be the sort of man who leaves the room. This page is not in a position to decide that, and it is not going to pretend to.

What can be said is narrower, and it has nothing to do with whether it is true.

Saying it tonight is not what makes it true or untrue. It was whatever it was before you said it and it will be the same afterwards. But saying it is the part that is still going on. The leaving of the room happened once. The verdict on it has happened every day since, and it is the only one of the two that still needs you.

So what happened gets said, and the other part does not have to follow it tonight.

I left the room when she was frightened.

That is the whole of what happened, and it is not reduced by one word.

Then the stop. Not because what comes next is false. Because what comes next is the part you are still doing, and it does not have to be done at the sink this evening.

It will feel unfinished. Leaving something out that has always been there does feel like that.

None of this touches the going over.

Her face, that week, what she asked and how many times — that is not a verdict and it is not in question here. It can have as much of your life as you want to give it, and nobody will ask you for it, in this chapter or any of the others.

And nothing is settled by any of it. If somebody in this is still alive, what has never been said can still be said, and it can be said this week. What is owed them is what you did, and that you are sorry for it. They were never owed your opinion of yourself.

Most evenings the second part will arrive anyway, straight after the first, the way it always has. It has had a long run and it is quick.

But some evening the water will be running and what happened will go out into the kitchen on its own, and then there will be a pause in which nothing is decided about you at all.

You dry your hands. The pause does not have to be filled tonight, and it will still be there tomorrow if you want it.