Prologue

According to Ellie I was too eager to please. Unable to make a decision; not my own man.

Which is why she dumped me.
Why I left for the Greek islands in the summer of ’88. And ended up in jail for murder.
How far back the seed was sown is impossible to tell.

Nothing comes from nothing. Be it fate or free will, life boils down to continuous binary code: a never-ending series of choices; yes or no; in or out; fight or flight. Until death ends the equation. Humans overcomplicate it; we invent shades of grey, hover in a limbo of moderation and deem it intelligence. Only the mad and the brave change the world. The rest look on in wonder.

I went to Greece to embrace the binary code, to get off the sidelines and become a player. To live in the moment. Or, as Ellie put it, to become my own man.

Was I accountable for the horror, that fateful summer? Looking back, it’s easy enough to pinpoint the sliding-door moments where I went wrong. But then, what use is hind- sight? As Kierkegaard wrote: ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’

Cold comfort when you’ve taken another man’s life.

*Contains strong language