When I decided to visit my father, I wasn't sure if he already knew I was dying. The city was busy. I never seemed to be there during the day, but even after dark it was still an overwhelming storm of sensation. Every one of my memories of its noise and dust are bathed in sodium - an orange wash speckled with headlights and the hateful thrum of the late rain.

I was certain he didn't know. He couldn't possibly know.

I had recenty been to the doctor. A routine check. They told me I had stage four pancreatic cancer. I think they were surprised by my lack of any real reaction. I don't really remember how long they said I had left to live, but I had almost instantly decided that having to live at this stage seemed like a choice more than anything and so I didn't particularly care either way. Regardless, I figured that my parents might like to know about this turn of events, so I decided it would be most kind to visit them and deliver the news in person.

Since I was already in the city, it made most sense to visit my father first. He lived there, close to the docks, in a large area where the endless brick houses mirrored each other and offered no frame of reference. No matter which way you would turn to try and leave, you would always end up on the north side, hemmed in by the twenty-metre concrete walls of the sprawling, belching dockyards beyond. A red-brick labyrinth in a Knossos of warehouses and overgrown, forgotten yards.

I remember being in the house rather than arriving at it. There was no transtion, or pleasant hellos at the door. We were in the living room, and I suppose it's never been entirely clear just how we got there. I was sitting on the couch and he stood over me. I had always known that we had a good relationship and that he loved me very much, and that he would be distraught if anything bad were to happen to me, but even so, I was still surprised that, when I told him I would die very soon, he took a gun from his pocket and placed it into his mouth.

He moved so fast that I didn't really have any time to react. When he pulled the trigger, the sound was muffled. There was no exit wound. The bullet must have simply bounced around the interior of his skull, liquidating his brain. His facial expression changed instantly and dramatically, from the warm intelligent gaze I had known all my life into a dull and lifeless stare. His shoulders dropped slightly, and he stopped moving completely, as if he was simply carved from a solid mass of glass and wax. He was, by all accounts, empty, yet he remained standing.

I slowly stood up from the couch and thought about what to do next. It seemed best to lay him down gently on his back so that he didn't fall over. I placed my hands against his spine and pushed him gently backwards, so that he rocked lightly on his heels. His gaze simply swivelled upwards when he began to tip, and it was clear to me at that moment that he really was dead. When I had finished lowering him onto the floor and I saw him laying there - lifeless - in the room we had watched so many good films and shared so many Christmasses, I was suddenly overcome by an oppressive sadness and, to my own complete bemusement, I began to cry.

At this point, doubtless made curious by the noise, my step-brother arrived downstairs. From the inside of the living room I heard his footsteps move from the carpeted staircase I could navigate in my sleep, stepping slowly onto each stair before finally down onto the reverberant wood of the hallway floor. I had, until this moment, assumed my father and I had been alone in the house and I began to think that the dead body on the floor might end up being some sort of a problem. I stepped into the hall and closed the living room door behind me. It would be less shocking for my step-brother to be told what had happened rather than if he unexpectedly saw my father lying on the floor, but on being told of the current situation he appeared as unsurprised to hear of the death as he was that I was present in the house at all.

Now that I was in the hallway, it dawned on me that there should be a process put into motion here. I couldn't simply return home. I lefted the handle of the old plastic housephone and attempted to call an ambulance. After dialling the emergency number an operator would appear on the line but every time I attempted to explain the situation they would hang up on me, as if to leave me no other option but to deal with everything myself, without anybody else's help. It was my fault and my mess and I would have to take the sole responsibility for it, as always.