Heap

He knew he was behaving like a cunt, but there didn't seem to be much he could do about it. They had been together eleven years. Eleven and a half, she would pedantically correct. And this had started over - what? Running out of milk. A row over whose turn it was to do the shopping, leading to a deadlock which had now lasted four days, with him starting to get accustomed to the taste of black coffee. Him accused of shirking his fair share of duties. Being put in the role of a typical man.

Nothing could infuriate him more. Few principles had survived the process of ageing, but one was a refusal to be held a representative for the male sex or gender. He would never be a typical man. He didn't even like cars. He'd always preferred the company of women. Never been a blokey man.

So somewhere a dam burst. Eleven and a half years of accumulated resentment swept through and the current took him somewhere he didn’t expect. She was fat. She didn't look after herself. Other women of her age looked better. Could he be blamed for looking then? And he'd only ever looked, and only recently, which made him pretty saintly. Never strayed. But the momentum carried him too far. He'd never loved her. The length of their relationship was not an achievement, not a sign of commitment, but a failure. It was down to laziness and timidity and inertia. And he'd always preferred her sister.

That was an end to it. There was just that moment where you go over the edge and you sense the vanished possibility of not falling, and then you fall. She didn't say a word, just walked out. He poured himself a drink, or rather the first in the series of drinks. With something like fresh dedication for an achievable task, he turned himself to working through the dregs of bottles of bad foreign booze brought home from disappointing holidays. He was methodical. Early on, while he was still into the ouzo, the door slammed. He had finished the grappa, the overproof rum and the raki before unconsciousness took him.

He woke up the next day face down on the sofa with fur on his teeth and in his head, ink at the back of his throat and diluted blood working its way only weakly around his body. But there was a job to be done, and he was capable of being practical. He found the biggest case with wheels and filled it with as much of his stuff as he could. Mostly clothes, toiletries, a few books, and a hand-picked tranche of CDs. The rest would have to be negotiated.

Then he considered his options. Fairly friendless, he was, when you thought about it. At least, he didn't know anyone well enough to turn up at their door and ask to be leant a spare room. But sticking around could not be an option. If he could only avoid his family, and their judgements and their pity, for a while. So the cheapest possible hotel for the shortest possible amount of time it would have to be.

It was the evening when she returned, after a day sitting in parks trying not to cry too obviously. She had worried that he might be there. It would be like him to try to patch things up, to try to take back things which would always remain said. So when she found the house dark and empty she was relieved. She reflexively put back in the drawer an odd sock he had missed in his hurry. She ate pizza and then slept on the sofa.

It was three further days before she decided to make the bonfire. This was three days of not answering the phone, keeping the mobile turned off, not checking email. After she got tired of the ringing she found a way of muting the sound. He'd be surprised by that, had always called her a technological dunce. There would be many new skills she'd have to learn, she realised.

It took her a long time to gather the stuff. He had lots of it. Never threw anything away. But she was happy to take her time. She made it an interesting task. She layered it. She put photos of the two of them at the base. Then some of his crappy books, about which she'd always enjoyed sneering. Read good stuff or don't bother. The CDs were more problematic. She knew they wouldn't burn. But the covers would, so she smashed up all the boxes, put the paper covers on the fire pile and then with a pair of scissors scratched systematically the surface of every one of the stupid shining things. This was hard work. This took her a bit more than a day. Then she cut up all his remaining clothes and added them in strips. It was quite a pile, gathered at the end of their long but narrow, unkempt garden. The neighbours would have been wondering about this, but of course she didn't know them.

But then the fucking thing wouldn't light. It was the wrong time of year for bonfires, February, and a miserable, drizzly one at that. The pile got damp overnight. She tried lighter fuel but still it didn't take off. It only smouldered a little. He'd have loved that, of course. He would have crowed about her uselessness with the practical.

So she left it. Left it as it was. It would, in time, rot, she supposed. At this time of year, it would not take long for the objects to be irretrievable. In the meantime, all she had to do was keep the phone turned to silent, keep the lights switched off and not answer the door. He would, she knew, be furious when he found out what she had done to his stuff.

About three months later it had become a warm and sunny May. The spring was promising. The housing market was strong too, and the estate agent predicted a quick sale. The owner of the property, a man in his late 30s, was keen to sell, wanting the money fast, for he was planning a move abroad. So, no chain. It was an ideal starter home for a young professional couple, perhaps newly married and looking to move out of rented accommodation and place a first foot on the property ladder. It wasn't huge, but one of the rooms could serve as a nursery, if the new owners were looking to start a family, and there was a long, secluded garden with a great deal of potential for the kids to run around in.

Only problem was that big pile of mouldy rubbish down the end of the garden. The estate agent knew it was putting people off. They'd be shown around and be convinced, could be seen to be thinking about how they'd fix the place up, how they could have a life there. Then they'd see that pile and see all the faults of the house, how it looked unloved and uncared for, how poky and dark the rooms really were. He was convinced it had lost him sales. He was going to have to have a chat with the client, see if he could get him to spend a few quid to get all the rubbish cleared. He was sure he could be persuaded.

Belfast

Belfast was something different, a true city of parts. Sure, all cities have layers, but it is rare to come across a place that can be read in so many ways. In its grand Victorian architecture, the oppressively statement-making town hall and the solid quayside buildings, it reminded me of Glasgow or Liverpool. To some extent, you might say Belfast was twinned with Liverpool, while it echoes Glasgow as an unusually proletarian city, albeit on a smaller scale. But in the city centre there were gaps, quiet spaces, dead zones, right in the heart of the city. With these odd lacunae and interruptions, it reminded me more of an African capital. Where did the life get lived when people avoided the centre? But then the pubs at the north end of the city centre recalled my hometown, a small, valleyed, industrial revolution remnant in Lancashire. They felt equally parochial. The people, too, seemed of the same make-up as my people: short and weathered, unbalanced faces with small, compressed features, bad complexions. I fitted in, and recognised neighbours wherever I looked.

The next morning we took one step west of the main drag and were confronted with the occasional preserved mural, memorials to loyalist dead, some with shockingly recent dates, a Rangers’ supporters’ club, a drum and flute band suppliers, and a shop selling red hand flags, this latter veering towards the kitsch. The murals were interesting. That they have become tourism must be something to celebrate, surely? So why does it feel uncomfortable? In the end everything becomes tourism. See also Robben Island and Soweto township tours in South Africa. And think, too, how something intended to be intimidating, to delineate territory and offer a gauntlet, could also be something creative, could be something on which love and devotion would be expended. These murals were, in some way, public art: the first British street art, perhaps, and certainly a unique, home-grown form. One of the murals was dedicated to George Best, making me pause to think further about how something which started out as political, as propaganda, can mutate, keeping the form but changing the message.

And then another short step and we were down by the university, and the botanical gardens, beautiful on this unexpectedly warm and sunny afternoon. The university was perfect, an ideal campus, the sort of place you wish you’d gone to. I could have learned here. Here was the young life of Belfast.

I found it a place of contrasts, then, of contradictions, and parts that didn’t quite mesh. But I also found myself surprisingly in love with it, and I know I’ll come back.