I’m a fishmonger and I sell fish to the good people of this county, getting up early every day to buy fish from Swansea. I have a bit of a rival fishmonger called Mal. I say rival, we’re actually on good speaking terms, and we help each other out occasionally. I work the Saturday markets, Mal does the Sunday ones. Occasionally, we’ll swap over if one of us wants to go to a wedding or something. It works ok, mainly. Once I had a load of trout and Mal was keen to take them off me, made a good sale, he said, and he thanked me profusely. I tend to sell the basic fish - cod, plaice, rock and all that, while Mal tends to flog the to upper market customers - salmon, trout, crab. We both do well in our separate markets, and get along ok.

One Saturday, I was at my farmers market, and Mal was there too. He was selling shellfish mostly - cockles, whelks, clams, something I don’t generally sell. I went up to him and asked him, nicely, why he was doing this. He said it was an experiment, to see if he could sell that kind of product on a Saturday, and if he did, I was welcome to learn any lessons from my sales. All very friendly really, nothing meant, he said.

A few weeks later, there he was again, Mal on a Saturday, but this time he had his full range of fish for sale. I went up to him, he was very busy with customers, and I was angry, he could see that. He noticed me, but continued to serve his customers, there were a lot of them. The next week, the same, there he was, and I went up to him again and noticed that he was selling his fish at practically cost price, hence the long queues and none at my stall. None at all. It was heartbreaking. Mal had positioned himself near the entrance to the market. I raged at him, most unbecoming, especially with all his customers looking on. I stomped back to my stall in an obvious fury.

I asked another local fishmonger, Jock, if he knew anything about all this. Jock was also being targeted, and Mal was working around the clock. Jock said that Mal had won £132,000 on a lottery.

I went up to Mal’s stall at the next market. Mal looked worse for wear, and he had a hip flask. As I was waiting for a gap in his queue, I saw the clever way he was swigging at the hip-flask. His wife June was there too, not looking her best either. I just stood and stared, and I didn’t confront him this time. At the end of the market, I saw June driving them home in their new VW Transporter van.

My business was suffering. Mal had a Grand Plan. He was selling his fish at cost price until all of the local fishmongers went out of business, and then he’d have a whole empire to himself. But this was out of character for Mal. He had that lottery money to live on for a while, so that was the plan - sell fish at cost price, no profit.

I was losing money, and I had to give up the fishmonger business—a business that had been in my family for generations. It hit me hard, as it was all I knew how to do. I knew my fish. I got a job in the local chicken factory, working on one of the big machines there.

One day I had an industrial accident, and I was in the hospital for a long time.

And then I died of my injuries.

How am I writing this, then?

I’m not.

I’m Mal, and my AA sponsor suggested that I write stories from my victims’ perspective.