I put out my hand and think of everything that has ever made me feel small and cold. I think of the staring moment of denial when I learned of Adeodatus’s death, of the scream I let loose when I realised Augustine had really kicked me out, that he had put his God between us. I remember Monica’s frosty gaze the first night we met, and how she passed the fruit to everyone at the table but me. I think of my small, spiteful revenges, of the idle notion I have entertained recently of telling the whole story so that my Reminiscences should stand in contrast to his hurtful Confessions . I think of my stupid, over-ornate prank, and how it has ensnared a generation of otherwise intelligent people and led to this moment, perhaps to Scipio’s death and surely to some greater plot to come. I think of all the times I have been less than I tell myself I am: passing beggars in the street without caring, shouting at my infant son, betraying confidences for the thrill of gossip. I remember I once took a lover purely because I knew someone else desired him, and relished the pain I inflicted more than the sex, and in the end they married other people and are still joyless. I confess, silently, that I am frightened above all else that I have wasted my life, missed my opportunities, and that everything I am will be lost absolutely when I die. I admit my greatest horror: that there is no goddess, no God, no jennaye and no afterlife, that all there is, is rot, and no meaning to any of it. That I will never see my son again, raised up in a new body and playing in a field for ever.