Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

“Fuck you,” I said. “Like I usually hang out with assholes like you.”

“Well, there we are, then. We should all shake hands, thank one another for a most instructive evening and then go our separate ways.”

“And die,” said Jess.

“Possibly,” said Martin.

“And that’s what you want?” I said.

“Well, it’s not a long-held ambition, I grant you. But I’m not giving away any secrets when I say it’s come to look more attractive recently. I’m conflicted, as you people say. Anyway, why do you care?” he said to Jess. “I’d got the impression that you didn’t care for anyone or anything. I thought that was your thing.”

Jess thought for a moment. “You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there’s always that bit when the baddie slips off, and the hero tries to save him, but like the sleeve of his jacket tears off and he goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaagh. That’s what I want to do.”

“You want to watch me plunge to my doom.”

“I’d like to know that I’ve made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve.”

“I didn’t know you were a fully trained Samaritan,” said Martin.

“I’m not. This is just my own personal philosophy.”

“I’d find it easier if we saw each other on a regular basis,” said Maureen quietly. “All of us. No one really knows how I feel about anything, apart from you three. And Matty. I tell Matty.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Martin. He was using profanity because he knew then he was beaten: telling Maureen to go fuck herself required more moral courage than any of us possessed.

“It’s only six weeks,” said Jess. “We’ll throw you off the top ourselves on Valentine’s, if it helps.”

Martin shook his head, but it was to indicate defeat rather than refusal.

“We’ll all live to regret it,” he said.

“Good,” said Jess. “So is everyone all right with that?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had a better plan.

“I’m not going on beyond six weeks,” said Maureen.

“No one will make you,” said Martin.

“As long as we know that from the start,” said Maureen.

“Noted,” said Martin.

“Excellent,” said Jess. “So it’s a deal.”

We shook hands, Maureen picked up her handbag, and we all went out for breakfast. We couldn’t think of anything to say to each other, but we didn’t seem to mind much.

It didn’t take long for the papers to find out. A couple of days, maybe. I was in my room, and Dad called me downstairs and asked me what I’d been up to on New Year’s Eve. And I went, Nothing much, and he went, Well, that isn’t what the newspapers seem to think. And I was like, Newspapers? And he said, Yeah, there’s apparently going to be a story about you and Martin Sharp. Do you know Martin Sharp? And I was, you know, Yeah, sort of, only met him that night at a party, don’t know him very well. And so Dad goes, What the hell kind of party is it where you meet someone like Martin Sharp? And I couldn’t think what kind of party that would be, so I didn’t say anything. And then Dad was like, And was there… Did anything… All tenterhooks or whatever, kind of thing, so I just dived in. Did I fuck him? No I did not! Thanks a bunch! Bloody hell! Martin Sharp! Eeeeuch! And so on and so on until he got the idea.

It was fucking Chas, of course, who phoned up the newspapers. He’d probably tried before, the little shit, but he never had much to go on then, when it was just me. The Jess Crichton/Martin Sharp combo, though… unresistable. How much do you think you get for something like that? A couple of hundred quid? More? To be honest, I’d have done it if I were him. He’s always skint. And I’m always skint. If he’d been anyone worth selling up the river, he’d be halfway out to sea by now.

Dad pulled back the curtain to sneak a look, and there was someone out there. I wanted to go out and have a go at him, but Dad wouldn’t let me; he said that they’d take a mad picture of me, and I’d look stupid and regret it. And he said it was undignified to do that, and in our position we had to rise above it all and ignore them. And I was like, In whose position? I’m not in a position. And he went, Well, you are, whether you like it or not you are in a position, and I go, You’re in a position not me, and he said, You’re in a position too, and we went on like that for a while. But of course going on about it never changes anything, and I know he’s right, really. If I wasn’t in a position then the papers wouldn’t be interested. In fact, the more I act as though I’m not in a position, then the more I’m in a position, if you see what I mean. If I just sat in my room and read, or got a steady boyfriend, there’d be no interest. But if I went to bed with Martin Sharp, or threw myself off a roof, then there would be the opposite of no interest. There’d be interest.

When I was in the papers a couple of years ago, just after the Jen thing, I think the feeling was I was Troubled rather than Bad. Anyway, shoplifting isn’t murder, is it? Everyone goes through a shoplifting phase, don’t they? By which I mean proper shoplifting, boosting Winona-style, bags and clothes and shit, not pens and sweets. It comes just after ponies and boy bands, and right before spliff and sex. But I could tell that it was different this time, and that was when I started to think things through. Yeah, yeah, I know. But better late than never, eh? What I thought was this: if it was going to be all over the papers, it was better for Mum and Dad to think that I’d slept with Martin than to know the real reason we were together. The real reason would kill them. Maybe literally. Which would make me the only family member left alive, possibly, and even I’m making up my mind which way to go. So if the papers had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Obviously it would be pretty humiliating at college, everyone thinking I’d fucked the sleaziest man in Britain, but it would be for the greater good, i.e. two alive parents.

The thing was, even though I’d started to think things through, I didn’t think them through properly. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d just given it another two minutes before I’d opened my mouth, but I didn’t. I just went, Da-ad. And he was like, Oh, no. And I just looked at him and he goes, You’d better tell me everything, and I said, Well, there isn’t much to tell really. I just went to this party and he was there and I had too much to drink and we went back to his place and that’s it. And he was like, That’s it, as in end of story? And I went, Well, no, that’s it as in dot dot dot you don’t need to know the details. So he went, Jesus Christ, and he sat down in a chair.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t need to say I’d slept with him, did I? I could have said we’d snogged, or he tried it on, or anything at all like that, but I wasn’t quick enough. I was like, Well if it’s a choice between suicide and sex, better go sex, but those didn’t have to be the choices. Sex was only a serving suggestion sort of thing, but you don’t have to do exactly what it says on the packet, do you? You can miss the garnish out, if you want, and that’s what I should have done. (’Garnish”—that’s a weird word, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever used it before.) But I didn’t, did I? And the other thing I should have done but didn’t: before I told him anything, I should have got Dad to find out what the story in the newspaper was. I just thought, Tabloids, sex… I don’t know what I thought, to tell you the truth. Not much, as usual.