So, this is Hell.

It has to be. Where else would I be? I know better than to think I could have somehow survived that, and after the life I've lived, I'm hardly anticipating a welcome elsewhere.

But it's not what I imagined. I'd expected flames, lakes of fire, sulphurous smells borne on shriek-torn air.

This is worse.

There's nothing demonic about it.

It looks pretty much like every motorway services rest area I've ever stopped at in the middle of the night. There' s a digital clock on the wall with glowing red LED letters. It says it's 2:34 am. The display scrolls across a black background from right to left, but the time never changes.

In the empty lobby, a child's twenty-pence-a-go ride interrupts the silence with a shrill, tuneless jingle that makes me jump.

Most of the lights are off. Fluorescent strips illuminate a chrome counter. There's a woman standing behind it in a faded-out pink uniform. She has a late middle-aged look about her, but her back's to me, and I can't see her face. Her shoulders are slumped, like everything's just too much effort.

Nearby, the light in a tall, humming refrigerator flickers intermittently. Puddles of wet shine on the floor around a yellow A-sign with a picture on it of a stick figure falling over.

I check my pockets. No wallet, but there's a handful of loose change which, when counted out, comes to £1.10. Just enough to buy a cup of tea.

I make my way across to the counter, taking care to avoid the wet, slippery patches on the floor. I address the order to the back of the woman in the pink uniform. Her hands look to be on auto-pilot as, without facing me, she picks up a mug and places a tea bag inside. She pushes down the tap on the side of a large metal cylinder and boiling water streams out, pouring onto the work surfaces and the linoleum on her side of the counter. She moves the mug under the jet, and apparently doesn't notice when the water splashes, steaming, onto her hand. The skin turns unpleasantly pink, but she doesn't seem to care.

She turns the tap off again, slops in some milk, removes the teabag and turns around, mug of tea in her scolded hand. She passes it to me and I take it from her, and see her face for the first time. I'd thought she was middle-aged, maybe a little past that, but looking at that face, she could be any age. She could be anywhere between 25 and 80; it's impossible to tell. All I can say for sure is that, however old she is, she's been that age for a very long time. She holds the reddened hand out and I drop my collection of coins into it, then she turns her back on me again.

I realise too late that I didn't ask her for sugar. I consider asking her now, but decide I don't want to disturb her a second time.

I take the tea and sit down in one of those plastic chairs attached to a little table - the kind that seem to have been designed in defiance of both style and ergonomics.

The tea is a dark, stewed colour: the colour of a pair of tan leather shoes I used to own. The milk wasn't as fresh as it could have been, and there's a thin brown scud on the surface. I take a sip anyway - not much else to do - and decide to leave the rest.

I sit and watch the mug. I'm not sure for how long. I watch as slowly, unbelievably slowly, the tea evaporates. The level drops, a nano-millimetre at a time. I can feel my brain going numb as I sit and stare, but eventually, there's nothing left but a brown stain at the bottom of the mug.

I look up. The time still reads 2:34 am.

The ageless uniformed woman emerges from behind the chrome counter and starts wiping down the plastic table tops, although they don't look like they need it much.

She stops at my table, cleans around the now-empty mug. She tells me that I'll have to go back up to the service counter if I want a refill. I'm about to tell her that I've no more money, when it occurs to me for no reason to check my pockets again. I hear the jingle of coinage, and I know without looking that there will be exactly £1.10 there.

The woman retreats again in the direction of the counter, and once she's back in place, I go and buy another cup of tea which I have no intention of drinking. It disturbs me slightly less this time when she scalds her hand and arm under the tea urn and doesn't notice, but it's still bad. The tea looks no more drinkable than the previous cup. Change clinks flatly into the palm of her blistered hand. Once again, I forget to ask her for sugar, but it doesn't seem to matter much.

I put the mug down on the nearest table. Some tea slops onto the plastic surface. At least it will give the woman in the uniform something to clean up.

I walk past the shop, closed, with security shutters pulled down. Only the chiller cabinets throw out a low glow. Rows of bottled and cartoned drinks, of plastic-wrapped pasties and sandwiches are silhouetted against the dim light. There's an arcade too, dark and cordoned off. The coin slots of switched-off fruit machines wait like a dozen hungry mouths.

I pace the lobby for a while. There's nothing much to see.

There's a pay phone on the wall. On a board beside it, cards have been tacked up: minicab companies; discreet erotic masseuses; strangers guarantee that you can EARN £££'s FROM YOUR OWN HOME. I look at the telephone numbers on the cards, but all the digits blur together. It's not like it would make much difference. A closer look reveals that the cable between the handset and the telephone unit has been severed. I turn the handset over in my hands. The plastic casing feels greasy and unpleasant. I put it back in the cradle.

Nearby, there's one of those American-style ATM machines. I wonder vaguely what happened to my wallet. I wonder what happened to me.

I push open the door to the toilet. The light's a harsh glare, and it smells of bleach and urine, overlaid with the cloying, back-of-the-throat smell of sickly air-freshener. Above the central bank of sinks, there are plastic-fronted frames, designed to hold posters, but they're all empty. On one side, there's a row of urinals; on the other, a row of cubicles. Both lines stretch away as far as I can see, disappearing into grey-tiled nothingness somewhere in the distance.

They must go on forever, or so close to forever as makes no difference.

It's all so horrible.

I stand in front of a mirror. My reflection looks back at me, worse for wear. I think about crying, and realise I'm not sure I remember how to. Do the tears come before the sobbing, or is it the other way round?

This is bad. I've wanted to kill myself before - a few bad nights after too much to drink and too many wrong decisions, and I've talked myself out of it - but post-mortal suicide seems a lot more complicated.

I look around through painfully dry eyes and see something that wasn't there last time I looked.

I take the mop out of the bucket and squeeze it out in the metal wringer.

Maybe this isn't Hell. I'm going to be here for a long time, but it might not be forever.

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