The next time I speak to you I may be dead. I may not be. At my age, I may be dead any time. I often think I died years ago, this is just a dream.

It may appear to be a fairly one-way conversation, but it will be a long one. About 229 pages. My farewell to you is The Ragazzo, my latest and possibly last novel- if my literary executors get their act together and get it published. When you read it, you are speaking with me.

The Ragazzo is the ultimate Outsider. Castrated for a bet, Guido has to make his way in the world of Opera over the bodies of anyone who stands in his way.

Guido is me, although I haven’t killed anyone – as far as I know. And  every Outsider looking out of his or her eyes, from the chaotic place where he lives inside his skull (I’m going to use the masculine pronoun, because I’m talking about me), through the clouds of self through which he peers, tries to identify recognisable landmarks of comfort. Sometimes they turn out to be mirrors and it’s not easy to see through those. Sometimes they are the words one craves for sustenance, essential for continuance, for survival.

There to answer the question, what do they think about me.

(Are you with me yet?)

I was an outsider from the moment mother put me through the windscreen of her Renault, when I was five. I don’t know why she attacked the brakes so violently, her high heels slipping off the brake pedal, the front of the little car doing an elegant impression of cardboard crushed up against the fist of a giant. The scar I bear across my eyebrow faces me now in the mirror. So hard to see through.

It was as if another world came into mine, intruded with that shard of glass into my skull, invaded there, splintered the me I would have been, lay where no-one else could ever reach it. And since then I believe, I have understood that I am, have always been and will always be an Outsider.

I grew up outside. At school the boys knew, so they banded together to exclude me with words carefully chosen to make me take refuge in solitude inside my skull, where I was safe. Which I populated with words, many written by great writers, all of whom were whispering or shouting or screaming “HELLO IN THERE – come into my castle!  I will populate your brain with my creatures for a while, then I will leave you feeling more alone than ever, the decaying corpses of my creations mouldering in your mind until they are replaced with other populations, others screaming HELLO IN THERE! CARE ABOUT ME now!” And the sad and violent truth kept coming back, the knowledge that no-one could ever really understand.

No-one can ever really understand.

Listen to me: You are alone.

Listen to me some more: So are you.

Listen to me again and again. Hey, you over there! Listen: So are you.

Alone.

When you and Mr Death have to merge (he is male), you will know exactly what I mean.

And so am I.

(Are you with me yet?)

(Do you get it?)

(Yet?)

(Do I have to make it plain?)

(We’re all alone. Because we are all outsiders. Living here in our skulls which we think are barriers. Which we think.

We are alone together)