I had an Ikeamare in Ikeashwitz. My girlfriend, Ai-chan, and I were populating a new flat and on the shuttle bus I broke a basic relationship rule and started talking about an ex-girlfriend, Ariadne, who had given me the secret to mastering Ikea. The mention of the messanger put a wrinkle of irk between Ai and I, which I smoothed by emphasising the message; that only hell demands more peace of mind than Ikea.

The problem of course isn't so much megacorp greenwash, trying to escape from the maze of the minataur, forcing your way upstream against the shuffling armies of the undead, or even, in my case, that I'm writing a story about a cunicular superhero who does battle with unhappy furniture. No; its choice - aggrevated by penury: 'the tall one or the folding one? well the folding one is cheaper, but it doesn't look as nice, although, hm, not sure, perhaps the blue one? its not as comfortable, but we can get a better one later, but what if we get the wider one and put a throw over it, unless...' and on and on and on and and on.

But there was more. As we entered I saw the 'penang' armchair, and wondered how many people in how many worlds have sat possessed upon it by the insane idea that their arse is not being loved. Then I saw the one in my mum's house. Then I saw the one I had in my flat in Madrid. Then, as we wondered round and round, I began to realise, with a creeping cold sense of dream-dread, that Ikea was, in fact, entirely comprised of rooms from places I'd lived.

All of it. There was the futon I'd written my first awful novel, there was the sofa Bill had single-handedly carried up eight flights of stairs, there was the bed that Isabel had freaked out in when we'd made love... and there was Isabel.

Isabel herself was lying on a 'Malm' bed in the same bewildered state I remembered from the night I'd brought her back to my place and created a weird psychic sense of sexual distortion between us. My current girlfriend in Japan was trying to work out whether she preferred the beige or the cream Billy, while a girl I'd slept with ten years ago in Spain was here in Osaka, half naked in a showroom bed.

'Isabel? What are you doing here?' I approached her, but she paid no attention to me.

'Darren! I've just seen you.'

I turned; Ai-chan was flustered and gesturing.

'Over there,' she said, 'a younger you - you were arguing with a girl. And, yi! there you are again!'

I turned. The me of Madrid was sheepishly approaching Isabel upon the bed of disaster.

'And again! And again!'

Ikea wasn't just filled with all my old chairs and tables; it was also filled with all my old mes. Hundreds of me, drifting around hundreds of old domestic situations - along with crowds of old friends and ex-girlfriends at various ages, a vast shifting dreamworld of intersecting psyche-phantoms.

Ai, against her will, was fascinated. She didn't really want to know what I was like before we'd met, or how more or less beautiful / thin / blonde / etc were my previous loves, but she couldn't help herself. I tried to restrain her, but was held back by myself.

'Darren, you've got to help me.' The Madrid me was tugging at my sleeve. I turned and looked at him, remembering when I had been there, so desperate to know what to do about Isabel.

He started to explain but I hushed him with a gesture.

'What you are doing is against both of your instincts, and you know it, so raise your game and send her home or you'll both feel squalid and used for weeks.'

That shut me up. I went off to find Ai, but was waylaid by more mes, all with old love-problems. At least my younger selves had the humility to ask my advice, but it was pretty chaotic, so I got them to form a queue down in the market hall, leaving Ai with the ghosts of girlfriends past - and grateful that I'd kept so faithfully to another cardinal relationship rule - of not recycling romantic gestures. In fact, now I think of it, a large part of my 'relationship ethics' stemmed from the suspicion that something like this was bound to happen one day.

Anyway, it was heaving down in the market hall, but all my mes were getting on pretty well together and waiting patiently in line. I didn't want to get in long discussions with my old selves, so I just dealt specifically with the problems they had at the time; 'You always find her less attractive two days before she ovulates,' 'Don't try and change her bad habits - if you love her enough they'll either change by themselves or you won't care,' 'Things unsaid will speak in bed,' 'She responds to you as life does, and vice versa,' 'Write the letter, but for God's sake don't send it' - and so on.

It was all a bit silly. Reminded me of Marlybone Song, the man who knew everything, who sat at the top of the hill and people would come from miles around to ask him questions - such as 'how do I fill in my tax returns?' and 'what's a good chat up line?' and 'how do I get past level seventeen on Manic Miner?' and so forth, and in the end he just invented a search engine and sodded off back to Neptune.

But the last me had the good question, he was burning with it. His house, as they used to say, was on fire.

It was the wordless question - the impossible question - the question that only everything can answer.

He looked at me, saw that I was still asking it, shook my hand and left.

And that was the last I saw of myself.