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I couldn’t control it anymore, and that in itself was problematic.

I hadn’t managed to get up this morning, my body once again paralysed and unable to function.

Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion from my pulse racing again and the constant panic attacks and the way these goddamn antidepressants worked.

Or didn’t. I’d upped my dose two weeks ago, under the guidance of my doctor like the responsible human being I was.

Not for the first time, I might add, and it took a couple of weeks for things to stabilise.

I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to see that.

Accept things would get better, because right now, everything was dark and hopeless and muddled, and I couldn’t seem to make my body function.

My brain was running too slowly, having to deal with the darkness in my head, the constant reminders of my complete and utter failure to keep myself sane.

It wasn’t easy in a world where nothing was fair. Where money bought triumphs over honesty and where a mother was judged to be the fitter parent, irrespective of what came out of her mouth.

I was depressed; I knew that. I was also hard done by, consumed by grief and longing for my children to the point I was losing my mind.

My children were alive and well on the other side of the Atlantic, living in some apartment complex in Miami with their nanny and a team of staff while their doting mother was heading up a divorce trial in New Orleans.

Which was obviously why I, their father, who lived in a four-bedroom townhouse with communal gardens, had been deemed an unsuitable choice to care for my children’s needs, their well-being, future education and most of all, to provide them with a stable, nurturing upbringing.

The anger deep in my stomach was a constant, all-consuming backdrop to my inability to get dressed in the mornings and feed my starving body.

I’d once tried yoga. It wasn’t for me. So I’d signed up for mindfulness classes, then joined a self-help group where they’d convinced me that walking barefoot in grass would make me see the world differently.

It hadn’t. It was just easier than putting on shoes.

I’d given up on working, eating, exercising, laundry…

Most of all, I had given up on myself. Grief like this did that to you, and despite having heard of similar cases in the past, circus-like court cases where people’s lives were utterly razed to the ground, I’d never thought the clown in the middle would turn out to be me.

I needed to go to work. I had contracts and obligations to fulfil, and I was in so much bloody debt and trouble already.

My PA, whom I had let go months ago, still rang me daily, sometimes threatening me, sometimes trying to get me to see the imaginary light she was shining at me from the end of the tunnel.

I had a future, she would say. My children would one day need me .

Lies, all lies, determined by a farcical family court, under the watchful eye of my ex-wife. The mother of my children.

I hadn’t seen them in over a year. I wondered if my now three-year-old even knew who I was, if he ever asked for his daddy. Or if he called that horrible man my ex-wife now called her husband…

I didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember. Too late. The violent shudders erupted again as I tried to take control over the goddamn crying.

I could hear my phone ringing somewhere inside.

I had long given up on jumping up and hopefully tapping the screen whenever it made a noise.

It had all been futile, that dream of contact.

A simple phone call, just their voices on the other end of the line, would have been enough.

The thought of it made my throat close up in grief.

I was surprised the damn thing still had battery—I rarely even charged it anymore. I wanted it to die, to just leave me alone.

I was alone, living in a house where I never went upstairs anymore.

I’d dismissed the cleaning service months ago and just existed, drifting mindlessly between the patio and the one space I had left that didn’t include memories of a life I no longer had.

A small kitchenette, the old worn-out guest bed, a chair, the TV showing a grey static screen from where I’d turned it on last night and failed to get the channels to show anything else.

Everything was too much of an effort. Nothing made sense. And I felt like I wasn’t even here anymore.

I was nothing. Just static in this weird rain.

Wet. Cold. I didn’t feel it anymore. I got up and once again circled the garden, my now muddy feet flattening the sodden grass. It was supposed to focus me, make me one with Earth. What a load of crap.

I wish I was braver. I wish I had the ability to end everything. Just make the world go dark for one final time.

I didn’t understand why I didn’t. Perhaps because I still had some small speck of hope somewhere in me. Or a deep burning fear that my children still needed me.

I had failed them. Failed at everything. Failed as a parent and a father and a human being. Failed at my company. My life’s work. I wondered what was actually left of me to kill off.

Nothing. Just skin and bones that were empty and cold .

I sat back down on my wrought iron garden furniture, not fighting as my body shut down. Maybe I was still breathing. Maybe I wasn’t. I truly didn’t care anymore.

A gust of air flowing over my body, water running down my face. The droplets of rain were warm against everything cold in the world. Summer. It was still summer. I tried to remember the date. Day. Week? Couldn’t even tell you what month it was.

I wondered how long I’d been sitting there and looked up, expecting to see an expanse of grey sky, instead discovering I wasn’t alone.

Perhaps I should have been startled by the presence of another human being in my space.

Two chairs. One for me, one for Veronica, who was no longer my wife, no longer here and no longer anyone I should care about.

Anger. All that futile anger.

He was just sitting there, in her chair, the man. Older, grey hair, dressed in a shirt and tie. Slacks.

He was getting soaked, the rain on his shirt spreading and merging into a never-ending pattern. Water ran down his face, joining the wet patches on his shirt, white turning a fleshy shade of grey. Apricot? For some reason, that made me smirk, not that he saw; he wasn’t looking at me.

That was when I noticed the cups. Two of them, one in each hand, which I only noticed because he raised one to his lips and took a sip. Steam swirled around his chin in a noisy pattern as the raindrops hit the surface of the hot liquid within.

Rain tea. My daughter would have laughed.

“Cup of tea. No sugar. I assumed, taking it you were not a sugar person.”

A sugar person? Was I? I had no idea, but he was holding a cup out to me, and I took it, accepting his gift of a hot drink on automatic. No feelings.

This was what I was now. Accepting . Day after day of having accepted my fate. Weak. Always weak.

“It’s not a bad thing,” he said in a deep but quiet voice. “Sitting outside in the rain. In a way, it’s soothing, like having an outside shower. Rinsing the day off.”

“The day,” I echoed. Was it morning still? Or had I somehow made it through another day? It felt like hours, days, centuries since I’d dragged myself out of bed .

“The day,” he repeated. “It’s seven at night. Still light and warm, just a heavy shower. Feels fine now, but we’ll both get cold eventually. Tea warms you up. Even in the rain.”

The man was nuts and made no sense.

I knew who he was, of course. He lived at number five.

The door to his basement flat was open, the raindrops making spots on his wooden deck and garden furniture that was much like mine.

A few children’s toys leant against the brick wall.

I had similar items, now stored in the garage.

I wondered if my son had outgrown that bike yet.

He probably had. Another deep stab in my chest.

I remembered the tea in my hand and took a sip. It was hot against my lips and scalded my throat as it ran down. I couldn’t tell if it was on the inside of me or if I’d spilled the lot down my front.

I wondered why I didn’t care.

He didn’t seem to mind, sitting there staring at the trees against the back wall of the gardens.

A train thundered past somewhere out there in the world.

He paid it no attention, this man, all wet and weathered.

A man who had seen a bit of life. Perhaps he’d gone through his own traumas, cried in the rain on a rusting garden chair, like me .

Probably nothing like me.

“I’ve been where you are, numerous times,” he said as if he’d read my mind. “It’s a very lonely place. I thought, if I sat here next to you for a while, you might not feel so lonely.”

“I see.” That was all my brain could muster up in response.

“You can ask me to leave, if you prefer?”

Well spoken. Wise. Polite, I’d give him that. Words? I had no more of them to give.

“I’m Stewart. Live at number five, with my family.”

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. That word triggered me more than any of the others I preferred not to be mentioned around me. Children. Father. Wife. Ex-wife. Custody. Family court.

There were so many titles I’d carried lately. The defendant. The accused. The parent who lost custody of his own children. The breaker of agreements.

I had fought, and lost. Nothing was fair in life.

“Dylan,” I croaked out. “Dylan…Scotland. ”

I wasn’t sure how to introduce myself these days.

Two years ago, I would have mentioned my degrees and qualifications, perhaps my company, my line of work in building law and the ages of my children.

Things that had once been so much a part of me that when I’d lost them, I’d become paper-thin, worthless.

Something that could so easily get washed away in a downpour like this.

“Dylan,” he said warmly, even though he probably felt anything but. He was a handsome fella. Silver hair, grey in his stubble, built well, no doubt looked after himself better than I did.

“Look,” he continued, shifting gently in his chair.

People did that, not wanting to startle me.

Perhaps I was as insane as they said. Perhaps I was prone to violence or unstable, to be kept heavily medicated at all times.

Once I hadn’t been, but these days, I was reliant on those little boxes of pills doled out in small prescriptions once a week to ensure I didn’t overdose.

I was supposed to have a phone call with my therapist once every two days.

I’d stopped paying her, and the phone calls had stopped.

Or perhaps I’d just forgotten about answering her calls.

That was my life. I couldn’t even remember what I was supposed to be doing. Apart from drinking this tea.

Good. Strong. Wet .

Warm.

I needed to get warm.

“Self-preservation instinct,” I said out loud, and he smiled.

“Indeed. So you agree that we should take you inside and get you warmed up?”

“Are you offering?” I had no idea what I meant by that.

“No.” He laughed, like he understood my weirdness. “And yes. I am happy to make you another cup of tea and put that robe in the wash. One fellow human to another.”

“I don’t know.”

I really didn’t, but he looked at me with kindness, no judgement.

It had been so long since someone was kind to me.

“Dylan, you need a hot shower, dry clothes and a good cup of tea. Let me provide that, and then if you want me gone, I’ll be out of your hair.”

What did you say to an offer like that from a stranger ?

I had nothing left to lose. He could be a serial killer for all I cared. Perhaps I would welcome his attack. Maybe he would be the one to finally put an end to all this.

“You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

He laughed again. “No. I’m a grandfather with mad skills in the tea-making department. That’s all. You’re not going to launch at me with a kitchen knife, are you?”

“Not that mad…not yet,” I assured him and surprised myself by getting up. Water ran down my legs like I’d wet myself, and I stood there watching it like an idiot.

“I’m going back for a change of clothes, fresh tea and an umbrella,” he said sternly. “I’ll expect you to be showered and dressed in ten. That work for you?”

Who was this guy again?

I had no idea.