Is this fiction?

All the characters in these pages are fictitious; any resemblance to reality is purest coincidence. And if you really want to know the truth, I'm the most fictitious one of all: a charmless charlatan, a hoax from artificial conception to faked death.

Now, here I am watching a bleached-out sun just appearing between the grey sea and greyer sky, out of breath, blood all over my hands and shirt, my head besieged by questions. And one of those questions is Is this fiction? I'm not too sure this is really happening to me. Why am I sitting here in a car, some Nissan it says on the steering wheel, that I can't recall picking out in a showroom or arranging a repayment schedule for, looking out at Brighton Pier. At least it looks like Brighton Pier. I've only ever seen it on TV before.

Believe me, I'm hoping this is fiction. That would explain everything.

You see, like everyone, I had some plans, but this isn't how I thought it would all work out. Nothing like this. My plans had not been overly ambitious; no, they were really quite simple. I wanted to be a real tourist. A tourist that has sunglasses and a guidebook, and an obstinate inability to merge into the background. I wanted to be an obvious stranger in some place far away from anywhere I am overfamiliar with. If you're going to be a tourist, and modernity demands that all of us behave like hapless tourists, gawping consumers of a prepackaged reality, even in our own homes, then why not go for the original tourist experience - a last chance escape from it all. My plans were nothing out of the ordinary: I was going to escape.

Saturday morning is coming alive now; people are jogging in the winter dawn, billowing trails of breath behind them, directing their eyes through the windscreen at my sorrowful state. It's not going to be a good day. This really isn't going to be a happy ending, is it? Things have a way of turning out so badly.

In my hand there is an address, written on an postcard. It's a Brighton address; I think I know whose address it is. If I explain whose address it is, and how it came into my possession, it will become clear why I am here. It may become clearer just how fictional this really is.