‘I just think it’s for the best.’

‘For the best?’

‘And it’s not as if we’re going places, is it?’

Going places?

Matthew hated these words as soon as they came out of his mouth. He realised just how much of an arsehole he really was. But at least that confirmed his decision to do what needed to be done.

Laura looked at him. A look that was at once hurtful and pitying. A withering stain on his conscience that he would take to his grave. She was lovely. There was no doubt about that. She had a smattering of freckles at the bridge of her nose that spread lightly to her cheeks and around her deep blue eyes. When she was interested or excited, those eyes would flare open in an instant, widening to extreme proportions, catching him in a flash of her light. Her quick smile, usually playful and long to linger. But not today.

‘Going places?’ Laura’s face screwed up in disbelief as she threw his words back at him. Weaponising them. ‘Going places?’

Matthew winced. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.’

‘Whatever this is? Let me tell you something, Matthew. You’re no good at a lot of things. You have no money, a shitty job, your political views need a serious awakening, oh and your sisters are ugly and entitled. You were never the most fun to be around but at least I used to think you were interesting. But you’re not even that anymore. You stare off into space at random moments. You leave it to me to carry the conversational burden. You’re unreliable. You’re always late, but you’re never in a hurry. You’ve no sense of urgency and you don’t care who you keep waiting. Shall I go on?’

‘No Laura, you don’t need to. Look, I know that—’

‘You have a shitty dress sense. Jeans and t-shirt just doesn’t cut it these days – you’re a grown man, so try to look like one once in a while. I hate your hair. It’s too long and you put far too much product on it.’ Matthew had to concentrate to stop his hands reaching to his head in reflex. Instead he kept them tucked securely between his knees and the car seat.

They had driven out by the lake for a change of scenery. It had taken twelve minutes of uncomfortable silence to reach the water’s edge down a little lane that he knew about. Laura had parked her little silver car in a space designed for launching craft into the water, a gentle slope lading down beneath the small lapping waves. They faced the island in the centre of the lake about a hundred meters from shore. A white house poked its head above the canopy of trees that fringed the island. A grandiose bell tower, or chimney rose above the reaching leafless branches.

‘And you’re shit in bed. Most men your age know their way around a woman’s body, but not you. I thought that was sweet at first. It was one of the things I liked about you. I used to feel special that you hadn’t had a lot of practice before you met me. But it’s not inexperience that causes you to fumble about aimlessly. It’s disinterest. Isn’t it Matthew?’

It was six thirty in the morning and the light was just coming up over the other side of the lake. A dog walker in a bright blue jacket shielded her eyes from the light that the headlamps were putting out. Laura switched them off and killed the engine. Without its gentle throb and reverberation it was far too close, too quiet in the car.

‘You’ve never been interested in me, have you Matthew. You’ve just been going through the motions. ‘

‘That’s not true.’ Matthew protested. ‘I just have a few other things on my mind, that’s all. I’m sorry that I couldn’t give you my full attention.’ Again, Matthew heard these words and disliked how they sounded. It was one of the reasons that he had decided to end this. It wasn’t fair to anyone to keep this going longer than it needed to.

‘I was going to finish with you last week. I’d convinced myself that we had nothing in common, and that I’d be better off with someone else. I really don’t know what stopped me. Perhaps I thought that you weren’t the type to mess me around or see others behind my back.’

‘I’m not seeing anyone else, if that’s the problem.’

‘I almost wish that you were,’ Laura said. ‘Her face tightening. Frown lines appeared on her forehead. Her chin and bottom lip quivered.’ It’s just me though isn’t it?. Just me, who’se not good enough. Just me, who isn’t enough for you.’

‘Laura, I’m sorry. It’s nothing to do with you, really. I wish I could explain but I can’t. If I were five years older, then perhaps—’

‘Perhaps what? We’d be married? I’d be pregnant? What difference would five years make?’

In truth, there was nothing Matthew could say. He understood why others did this kind of thing by WhatsApp, or by updating their Facebook profile. It would have been much easier to just ghost his way out of a relationship, failing to pick up the telephone or respond to any communications or social media posts. A month or two of that and girls soon got the message. That was according to his brother James. James was someone who he’d miss most of all, but he’d decided not to say goodbye to him. If this was tricky, that would be nearly impossible.

‘I got you all wrong though didn’t I? I mistook your inexperience for innocence. You’re not innocent. Far from it. You’ve a lot to answer for. Six months I wasted on you. I nearly failed my exams, nearly didn’t go to university because I wanted to be with you. I rowed with my parents and almost fell out with them for good. I defended you Matthew. And look where that has got me.’ Laura put her hand to her head and screamed. Matthew was shocked at the intensity. It was an animalistic, exasperated scream that he didn’t think Laura capable of making. He didn’t think that he was capable of eliciting it from her. ‘Shit. I can’t believe this is happening.’ Laura shouted into the roof of the car.

‘I won’t blame you if you want to hit me.’

The frown eased and Laura’s temper subsided but Matthew thought that cold and calm was somehow worse. ‘You’d like that wouldn’t you. That would make this easier for you wouldn’t it?’

Making it easier was the whole point of this exercise as far as Matthew was concerned. Since he could remember, he’d been wrestling with too much. There were too many things going on in his head. Too many Matthews competing for attention. Of course, he could just close his eyes and drift along with the tide. There were times where he’d done just that. Slept-walked thought his life. Neglected it.

But Laura was one person that he really cared about. One person to whom he really owed the truth, or something as close to it as he could manage. He couldn’t ask Laura, to carry him any further than he was prepared to carry himself.

Matthew prepared himself for what would come next. He drew in a deep breath and held it. He closed his eyes and sought himself out across the ‘divide’. That was his word for the thin fragment of whatever it was that shrouded his other selves. Sometimes it occurred to him as a dark veil. A curtain that he could draw and open at will. Something he could choose to look behind or choose to have it remain obscured. That was necessary, because he didn’t have the capacity to see everything all at once. He needed to compartmentalise.

But now he wanted to check on those other lives he was living.

At first, he thought that everyone was like him. When his friends daydreamed, he naturally thought that they did what he did, look in on his other lives, scroll through the channels. He’d been institutionalised already. For anxiety. The fear of missing out on moments lost to him because he wasn’t paying attention. He’d become hyper vigilant and locked himself away in his room to be in a better position to live those other lives. They thought he was insane, even without him ever telling the real truth. What might they have made of that? What would the doctors do to him if he’d come clean and told them that he was living a hundred different lives. In all of which, he was the same Matthew Kent but with different experiences, different education, skills and values.

He maintained an overarching consciousness over these lives, a thread of continuity that made it possible to make decisions like this. He didn’t know to which of his lives this ‘god’ voice belonged, or whether it would disappear if he discontinued the wrong one. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. That voice was the only thing keeping him sane.

And to keep himself sane, he had to trim his lives. He had to pare them down. Whether that was ten, or twelve, five or six, he didn’t know, but he thought he might know when to stop when he got to the right number.

He became dimly aware that Laura was looking at him. ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you? You make me bring you out here so you can finish with me, then you don’t even pay me the courtesy of listening. Jesus Matthew, I don’t really know you at all. I must have been crazy to go out with you in the first place.’

‘Sorry,’ was all Matthew could manage. He knew what he had to do now but he desperately wanted to check in on his ‘others’. He had to make sure everything was okay before he let go of this one. Once, he’d let go of the wrong one. He’d discontinued a very enjoyable life as a marine biologist. Tagging sharks off the Ivory Coast. He’d mistaken it for another. He’d got distracted, confused by a holiday one of his others had taken in Bimini and he’d cut the wrong cord. He’d looked away after severing the air supply then realising the mistakes he’d gone back to it. There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. By then he was too deep. He had to look away again, the feeling of discontinuation too intense.

Matthew got out of the car. Laura would find her way home. Her parents would comfort her and in time she would forget him. He watched the car start with a stutter. Laura crunched the gears and found reverse on the third attempt. He didn’t know how she managed that thing. He’d tried once and couldn’t even get first. He had to go into second and crawl along for a while, tending the clutch whilst gradually gathering enough speed for third. The brake lights flashed as she drove away. At first he thought she might have had second thoughts about driving away and had stopped to give him another piece of her mind but then she accelerated away, the car labouring the climb up the lane and away from Matthew on the shore.

He checked on the others.

By the time he returned, he was up to his knees in the lake. At first his ankles felt warm but then he realised it was just the numbing shock of the cold gripping him. They would soon lose all feeling, he knew. He’d done this before.

One last check. Then he was up to his shoulders. The lake lapped at his chin, it tickled his ears with its icy brush. And it stuck in his hair causing his scalp to recede and contract. He couldn’t feel his legs by now but relied on muscle memory to remove them from the ground. His head bobbed under, and he felt the shock and panic of water on his face. He wasn’t quite out of his depth yet, so he had to concentrate hard on lifting his legs. Once they were above his head, he knew he’d gone past the point of no return. The heavy tugging of the water on his clothes was enough to send him to the bottom. He exhaled. A little of the cold water played on the inside of his lip. Not an unpleasant feeling, but then all things were relative. He would count to three in his mind. On three he would inhale as deeply as he could. He’d take in the lake. He’d force it into his lungs. Then he’d look away. He’d spend time in the sun, on a beach where one of his others waited.

Right. Here goes. One, two, three—

A voice, cold and distant from above. A hand plunging down, snatching him up. A body next to his, trying to lever him to the top. All he had to do was ignore it. He just needed to look away.

The beach was indeed warm. The sun on his face was an incredible relief. Matthew propped himself up by his elbows. They dug into the soft sand and making bow waves as his warm skin displaced the free-flowing grains. He’d done the right thing. Now he could concentrate on his other lives, his favourites. He only had the same amount of time as anyone else. He had to choose wisely with whom he spend it.

But something niggled him. Did he care about the life he’d just discontinued? If he didn’t care about himself, then what about Laura. What about her?

His eyes snapped open under the water and saw a woman wading towards him, she was beautiful, dark hair, thin bones. She didn’t look strong but she clawed at him and shook him as if he weighed nothing. The cold infiltrated his eyelids. The cold was everywhere. It was all about him. It was him. He hadn’t yet filled his lungs with water but he had no air in them either. He was too heavy to be dragged, he was too lifeless to be lifted. He prepared to look away again.

But he couldn’t do that. He’d cared enough to say goodbye to Laura. He’d wanted to finish things with her so that she’d have a clean break. But now it occurred to him that what he’d done was cruel beyond measure. She would have been the last person to see him alive. Maybe she would blame herself. Perhaps she’d find it difficult to come to terms with.

It made him think about all of those other selves that he’d discontinued. He’d always had families, friends, lovers. Did he think about any of those people? He realised that none of his lives were entirely his own. They belonged in part to those who cared about him.

Matthew kicked out. He waved his arms, windmilling them until his feet struck bottom. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet but when he kicked, he felt the thud of solid impact through his body. He breached the surface.

Laura clung to him, dragging him to the shore, easily finding the strength. She dumped him on the ground like he was a child. She thumped his chest.

He didn’t look away.

Her face was an inch from his. Their noses almost touched. She was shouting something at him but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He felt his own tears. They ran down his face and mingled with the lake water. They provided just enough of the warmth Matthew needed.

He didn’t look away.