It’s the gun I reach for first. Crazy how Daphne kept this. I never knew she had. I turn it over and over in my hands, feeling its cold plastic grooves, tracing the smudgy red fingerprints on the handle. I can picture her now, handing it to me. I remember it so clearly. The night we met.

The script, the ticket, the programme: they’re all from that same night. The one that popped into my head earlier: the Sardines-in-the-maze night. I pick up the programme. The front cover reads: UNIVERSITY OF YORK DRAMA SOC PRESENTS: THE CAROL REVISITED.

The play was Marek’s extremely cringeworthy – and surprisingly violent – modern-day reworking of A Christmas Carol. I only had a small part, but still, as I turn the programme over, there I am: allocated my own blurry black-and-white cast photo. I’m gurning toothily at the camera in what appears to be an impression of Wallace from Wallace & Gromit.

I stare down at the picture, and suddenly I cannot believe that this grinning nineteen-year-old kid and I are actually the same person. It’s like looking at a photo of a stranger; I feel no connection at all. What is left of him now?

Obviously it could have been the snakebites and the sambucas, but that night in the maze – a week after this photo was taken – I remember feeling some strange, almost spiritual certainty that everything would turn out all right for me. That I was headed in a decent direction, that my dreams were achievable and the future was a blank canvas I was about to decorate beautifully.

And then – yeah. Look what happened. I took that canvas and filled it with mistakes and failures and wrong turnings. Bad decisions and lies and terrible things I can never, ever take back.

If there’s ever a Ben Hazeley Wikipedia page – and unless someone who shares my name does something worthwhile with his life, there won’t be, but just suppose there is – I can picture now exactly how it will look. Where other Wikipedia pages have headings like ‘Career’ or ‘Legacy’ or ‘Filmography’, mine will just say: ‘Fuck-Ups’. It will be a long, detailed, heavily bullet-pointed list that will begin with the subheading, ‘1996: Dad Buggers Off’ and end – next week – with ‘2020: Cheats On Wife’.

My head is getting heavier by the second, and I know I should crack on with the decorations, but for some reason I can’t tear myself away from the items in this tin. It suddenly makes me angry that Daphne’s kept all this stuff. I picture her sneaking up here from time to time, opening the lid and poring over these objects: physical reminders that she would have been better off without me.

Because that’s it, isn’t it? If your life is just a series of mistakes and screw-ups, then surely it would be best if you weren’t around?