Hes promised, Jess said.

Yes, said Martin. What were you attempting to simplify? It just… I dont know. Everything seemed so straightforward with you guys. Martin and the, you know. And Maureen and… I nodded over to Matty.

Ha! Like it makes things easy for me, said Jess.

Absolutely not.

The front door slammed somewhere between the not and the fair, and Crichton and I were left staring at each other.

Why is money relevant? Because say he had to keep an eye on me and Id gone into some club or something, and they wouldnt let him in because hes skint… Well Well what? I could go in there and OD on smack. Id be dead, just because you were too mean to stump up.

Firstly, shes eighteen. And secondly, I sat on her head in order to stop her from jumping. Which might not have been parental, but it was at least practical. Im sorry I didnt write you a full report at the end of the evening.

So what was wrong with you? Maureen asked. I dont know. Depression, I suppose youd call it.

And theyd got it wrong? Motherfucker. Did it really have to be this hard?

Yeah, but… No offense, but you were nutso. Didnt really matter what you said.

While I was on the phone to Theo, both my ex-wife and my ex-girlfriend left messages. I had thought of neither of them when Theo was reading out that story; now I felt sick. I was beginning to realize an important truth about suicide: failure is as hurtful as success, and is likely to provoke even more anger, because theres no grief with which to water it down. I was, I could hear from the tone of the messages, in very deep shit. I called Cindy first. You fucking selfish idiot, she said.

Rocknroll? Like Bill Haley and the Comets? said Martin.

I could promise that much, anyway.

I used to, said Maureen.

Ill give her as much as she wants, every time she asks for it, he said.

I was beginning to enjoy myself a little. I was almost sorry when I reached the Peugeot I was renting, at enormous expense, to replace the BMW I had given away. And it wasnt as if I knew where I was going anyway. But within minutes, the rest of my day was mapped out: Chris Crichton called on my mobile to invite me over for a chat; and then, shortly afterwards, from the same telephone number, Jess called to inform me that we were all going to visit Maureen. I didnt mind. I had nothing else to do.

In front of your son? But hes...

Very thoughtful of you.

Its why we can kill ants. And so after a while, suicide becomes imaginable, in a way that wouldnt be possible if they looked into your eyes every day.

A hundred quid? We were humiliating ourselves for the price of a decent dinner for two?

Please go and find her.

So you will be in loco parentis after all? Im not sure its that sort of gang, I said. "The Loco Parentis gang"… Doesnt sound very tough, does it? What are we going to do? Beat up the Paterfamiliases? You fucking shut up and you fucking shut up, Jess said, to Crichton and me respectively.

Jess, thats not fair.

Hed love to, said Jess. But hes flat broke.

It took us a while to get used to the sound of poor Mattys breathing, which was loud and sounded as if it took a lot of effort. We were all thinking the same thing, I guess: we were all wondering whether we could have coped, if we were Maureen; we were all trying to figure out whether anything could have persuaded us to come back down off that roof.

Whats it got to do with you where I spend New Years Eve? You seem to have spent it together.

Oh, I know I cant fix it. I just dont want to have to read about it in the papers.

Thats nice, after what happened to Jen. I wouldnt have thought you had enough daughters to spare.

Cindy barked once. The bark was, I suspected, intended to be a satirical laugh.

Ill have a little think and call you back. By the way, Jesss father has been trying to get hold of you. He called here, and I said we didnt give out personal numbers. Did I do the right thing? You did the right thing. But give him my mobile number anyway. I suppose theres no avoiding him.

Poor old Maureen. Ill tell you, you wouldnt have persuaded me down from that roof. No way.

Will you call me later? Yes, of course.

What? You leaving the party to go up there. And then coming back with those people. I couldnt work out what they had to do with anything.

There was a silence. I was waiting for them to dump on me.

Did you sleep with her? Why is that your business, Dad? I wasnt having that. I wasnt going to get involved in an argument about Jesss rights to a private sex life.

Go on, then.

Yeah. I knew that. That was the vibe I was after.

The point is, you were in loco parentis, said the proud father. I had forgotten that Jess felt about long words the way that racists feel about black people: she hated them, and wanted to send them back where they came from. She threw him a filthy look.

Im a politician. No one ever tells me anything but.

I九_九_藏_書m not being interviewed for this job, I said. I dont want it, and if you choose to give it to me, thats your lookout.

Right, you can start it off then, you fucking...

Yeah, I know. But mine seemed too… too fucking vague. Sorry, Maureen.

But there is a possibility that, if I hadnt been so forceful in the expression of my view, he wouldnt have marched round the corner to the police station and made a complaint about my relationship with his daughter.

I dont want to.

This was actually quite an acute observation. She was right: not once have I been the victim of misrepresentation or distortion. If you think about it, that was one of the most humiliating aspects of the last few years. The papers have been full of shit about me, and every word of the shit was true.

Anyway, she made me totally paranoid. If she wanted to, she could find out about the band in five minutes. And then shed get a hold of Eddie, and Lizzie, and then shed find out that I wasnt dying of anything - or if I was, Id kept the news to myself. Plus, shed find out that the disease I wasnt dying of was non-existent.

You dont know anything, apart from what you read in the paper.

How much do you want? Crichton let out a sigh, as if everything - the conversation we were having, New Years Eve, my prison sentence - had been carefully plotted to lead to this moment.

I dont know, Cindy. I mean, if I cant see them, then its not really my problem, is it? Its something youve got to deal with.

So why did you say it? Jess asked.

I think you should define yours first.

I dont doubt you can "get through" a hundred quid without trying. But he wouldnt need to "get through" anything, would he? Hed only need the price of admission, if youd overdosed on drugs. Im presuming that he wouldnt be stopping at the bar, if you were hovering between life and death in the toilet.

I appreciate that, Martin. He had clearly been media-trained to use first names wherever possible, like the rest of Blairs robots, to show that he was my mate. I have a hunch about you. I can see youve made some, some wrong turns in your life… Jess snorted.

Do you want to call him? He left his number.

Ill bet you got double what we were asking for, she said. Always works, when you mention Jen.

I havent got CCR, I said. It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, obviously it needed saying, but I had intended to give myself a little more preparation time.

OK, I shout and make funny faces, but I know when Im doing it. Most of the time I do, anyway. With them theres no predicting, is there? Theyre all over the place.

Yes, you do, said Jess. Yes he does.

All I want you to say is that if you see Jess getting herself into serious trouble, then youll either try to prevent it, or youll tell me about it.

Martin smiled. Telling people you have an incurable disease when you dont is probably right up there with seducing a fifteen-year-old, so he was enjoying my embarrassment. Plus, he was maybe even entitled to a little moral superiority, because hed done the decent thing when he got humiliated: hed walked to the top of Toppers House and dangled his feet over the edge. OK, he didnt go over, but, you know, hed shown he was taking things seriously. Me, Id thought about offing myself first and then disgraced myself afterwards. Id become an even bigger asshole since New Years Eve, which was kind of depressing.

I know you wouldnt be… Youre not exactly… Some of the tabloids would...

Jesss school does a very good job under very difficult circumstances, said Crichton. Fifty-one per cent of Jesss year got grade C or above at GCSE, up eleven per cent on the year before.

It made me feel important, and it made them feel as though they were at the centre of a story. I smiled a lot, said Good morning to no one in particular, and batted one of them out of the way with a briefcase.

So why dont you try and find him? Would you care one way or the other? Well. Caring about stuff like that… Its sort of not where Im at, is it? Wow. Thats honest.

No, man. Thats not… Like, I dont know. The Stones. Or… Theyre not rocknroll, said Jess. Are they? Theyre rock.

You can feel what you like, I said. But Im not reassuring anyone about anything.

Yeah, by accident, you stupid old bastard.

So what youre saying is, my life isnt worth a hundred quid to you.

Fucking hell, she said. Ive only done half a sentence. Whats funny about that? Martin shook his head.

Chris Crichton, unfortunately, was not prepared to greet me as a hero. I wasnt offered a handshake or a cup of coffee; I was ushered into his living room and given a dressing-down, as if I were some hapless parliamentary researcher. I had shown a lack of judgement, apparently - I should have found out Jesss surname and phone number and called him. And I had somehow shown a lack of taste - Mr Crichton seemed under the impressｒｅａd.９9csｗ.comion that his daughters appearance in the tabloids was something to do with me, simply because Im the kind of person who appears in the cheaper newspapers. When I tried to point out the various flaws in his logic, he claimed that I was likely to do very well out of it all. Id just stood up to go when Jess appeared.

Are you going to maintain a relationship with Jess? Define your terms.

You have children of your own, I understand? Sort of, said Jess.

Oh, we understand depression, said Martin. Were all depressed.

How much does it cost to get into a club, these days? Crichton asked.

Thank you.

No, I dont know where she is. Yes, I think shes alive. Why I think shes alive: because that whole thing with the car in the car park looked phony to me. What does it feel like, having a missing sister? I can tell you. You know how if you lose something valuable, a wallet or a piece of jewellery, you cant concentrate on anything else? Well, it feels like that all the time, every day.

OK, OK, all I wanted to do was be in a rock band. Like the Stones, or, or… Crusty music, said Jess. She wasnt being rude. She was just clarifying my terms.

Will you talk to me before you do? About all that? Yes. About all that.

I dont want anything, I said.

How could you not, if youre a human being? Maybe theyre not so admirable. Maybe theyre robot zombies.

Before I knocked on Jesss door, I sat in the car for a couple of minutes and examined my conscience. The last confrontation Id had with an angry father came shortly after my ill-advised and, as it turned out, illegal sexual encounter with Danielle ( , DD, fifteen years and days old, and, let me tell you, those days make quite a difference). The venue for this previous confrontation was my flat, the old, big flat in Gibson Square - not, needless to say, because Danielles father responded to a warm invitation, but because he was outside waiting for me as I tried to sneak home one night. It wasnt a particularly fruitful meeting, not least because I tried to raise the issue of parental responsibility with him, and he tried to hit me. I still think I had a point. What was a fifteen-year-old doing snorting cocaine in the gents toilets of Melons nightclub at a.m. on a Tuesday morning?

No, I said. The thing is, I never had it.

I dont know what I owe my daughters any more. I gave up smoking, years ago, because I knew then that I owed them that much. But when you make the sort of mess Ive made, smoking seems like the least of your worries - which is why I started again. Now theres a journey: from giving up smoking - giving up smoking because you want to protect your kids from loss for as long as possible - to arguing with their mother about the best way to tell them of your attempted suicide. They never said anything about that conversation in antenatal classes. Its the distance that does it, of course. I got further and further away, and the girls got smaller and smaller until they were just tiny dots, and I could no longer see them, literally or metaphorically. You cant make out their faces, can you, when theyre just tiny dots, so you dont need to worry about whether theyre happy or sad.

It was just me and Martin in the car because JJ didnt want a lift with us, even though we nearly went past his flat. JJ probably would have helped smooth the conversation along a bit, I think. I wanted to talk because I was nervous, and that probably made me say stupid things. Or maybe stupid is the wrong word, because its not stupid to say France is shit. Its just a bit abrupt or whatever. JJ could have put a sort of ramp up to my sentences to help people skateboard down from them.

Im not sure hes quite saying that, either, said Martin.

Or even just the garlic. But shes not the meat or the pasta.

So what can we do? Please? If youve got any ideas… The thing is, I said, Ive got problems of my own.

JJI didnt want to go to Maureens place with Martin and Jess because I needed time to think. Id done a couple interviews with music journalists in the past, but they were fans of the band, sweet guys who went away totally psyched if you gave them a demo CD and let them buy you a drink. But these people, people like the knock-on-the-door inspirational lady… Man, I didnt know anything about them. All I knew was that theyd somehow found out my address in twenty-four hours, and if they could do that, then what couldnt they do? It was like they had the names and addresses of every single person living in Britain, just in case one day any of them did anything that might be interesting.

Well. Gosh. Now what? Youre the agent. Id have thought this gave you no end of creative opportunities.

OK. I wont be going up there again just yet, if thats what you mean.

Jess sniggered unhelpfully.

Yeah, I can see that.

Why do you have to fuck up everything I do? Gosh, said Maｒｅad.99cｓw•coｍrtin. I can almost smell the incense.

You wont believe this - I dont think I do now - but in my head, what happened to Jen had fuck all to do with New Years Eve. I could tell, from talking to the others and reading the papers, that no one else saw it that way, though. They were like, Ooooh, I get it: your sister disappeared, so you want to jump off a building. But it isnt like that. Im sure it must have been an ingredient, sort of thing, but it wasnt the whole recipe. Say Im a spaghetti Bolognese, well I reckon Jen is the tomatoes. Maybe the onions.

Some people would start support groups and all that; I know they would, because Mum and Dad are always trying to introduce me to some fucking group or another, mostly because the group was set up by someone who ended up getting a CSE or whatever off of the Queen. And some people would sit down, turn the TV on and watch for the next twenty years.

Der, said Jess. We were wondering why you were up there.

Yeah, see. I was trying to make Maureen feel comfortable.

There was a long pause.

You bastard.

Everyone - everyone apart from Chris Crichton, obviously - knows where I live. They all have my home phone number, my mobile number, my email address. When I came out of prison, I gave all my coordinates to anyone who showed any interest at all: I needed work, and I needed a profile. I never heard back from any of the bastards, of course, but now here they all were, gathered outside my front door. When I say all, I mean three or four rather squalid-looking hacks, mostly the young ones, those puffy-faced boys and girls who used to report on school fetes for a local paper and now cant believe their luck. I pushed through the middle of them, even though I could have walked around them quite comfortably - four people shivering on a pavement and sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups doesnt constitute a media scrum. We all enjoyed the pushing, though.

I suddenly saw Jesss point: a weekly wage of ￡ from Britains lowest-rated cable TV station not only focuses the mind but stimulates empathy and imagination. Jess slumped lifeless in a toilet, all for the sake of twenty quid… It was too ghastly to contemplate, if you contemplated in the right spirit.

Were going to watch out for each other. Arent we, Martin? We are, Jess. If my words became any wearier, they would no longer have the energy to crawl up my throat and out of my mouth. I could imagine them slithering back down to where theyd come from.

There was a ruminative silence.

Excellent. That must be a great consolation to you. We both looked at Jess, who gave us the finger.

Wasnt straightforward with me, said Jess. I was crapping on about Chas and explanations.

And what about your daughters? Do they know? Not yet. But someone at school will tell them. They always do. What do you want me to say to them? Maybe I should talk to them.

OK. So the short version is, all I ever wanted to do was be in a rocknroll band.

Were in a gang, said Jess. Arent we, Martin? We are, Jess, I said, with what I hoped her father would recognize as a weary lack of enthusiasm. Were friends for ever.

Ha ha.

Hes worried about you sleeping with fifteen-year-olds, said Jess.

Me, I just started messing around. Or rather, messing around became more like a full-time job, whereas previously it had been a hobby: some messing around had already been done before Jen went. Ill be honest about that.

Is it? I would have thought it was merely self-evident.

In other words, I was freaked out enough to think I was in trouble. I took a bus up to Maureens, and on the way I decided I was going to come clean, tell them all about everything, and if they didnt like it, fuck em. But I didnt want them reading about it in the papers.

You seem to be the only person in the world that the papers get bang to rights. If they say youve slept with a fifteen-year-old, you have. If they say youve fallen over drunk in the street, you have. They dont need to invent stuff for you.

I handled that badly, he said, didnt I? I shrugged. She was extorting money with menaces. Either you give her as much as she wants every time she asks for it, or she storms out. And I can see that might be a little… you know. Disconcerting. Given the family history.

Thats awful, said Maureen.

Like what? Like youre relieved or something. You should be so lucky.

Theres something else people ask: Where do you think she is? Which is different from: Do I know where she is? At first I didnt understand that the two questions were different. And then when I did understand, I thought that the Where do you think she is? question was stupid. Like, well if I knew that Id go and look for her. But now I understand it as being a more poetic question. Cos, really, its a way of asking what she was like. Do I think shes in Africa, helping people? Or do I think shes on one long permanent rave, or writread.99csw.coming poems on a Scottish island, or travelling through the bush in Australia? So heres what I think. I think she has a baby, maybe in America, and shes in a little town somewhere sunny, Texas, say, or California, and shes living with a man who works hard with his hands and looks after her and loves her. So thats what I tell people, except of course I dont know whether Im telling them about Jen or about me.

Im the one whos failed, arent I? I think my failures preceded yours. Which, by the way, dont amount to anything. I mean, anything at all. I mean, there werent any failures. Youve been fantastic to me.

Ill bet youre regretting the decision not to go private, arent you? Im sorry? Very admirable and all, sending her to the local comprehensive. But, you know. You get what you pay for. And you even got a bit less than that.

Maureen, you go to church, dont you? Jess said.

So Im presuming, she went on, that theyve got it right again. You were up the top of a tower-block with the intention of hurling yourself off.

Exactly. She gave a little rueful snort. Shes OK, Penny. Shes not a bitch at all. Shes sweet-natured, self-deprecating, loving… Shed make someone a lovely partner. Im sorry.

To be fair to him, though, Mattys pretty quiet. Hes sort of so disabled that its OK, if you know what I mean. He just sits there. From my point of view, thats probably better, although I can see that from his, its probably not much good. Except who knows whether hes got a point of view? And if he hasnt got one, then its got to be mine that counts, hasnt it? Hes quite tall, and hes in a wheelchair, and hes got cushions and what have you stuffed up behind his neck to stop his head lolling about. He doesnt look at you or anything, so you dont get too freaked out. You forget hes there after a while, so I coped better than I thought I would. Fucking hell, though.

JJ was already there when we arrived, so when we walked in it was like a family reunion, except no one looked like each other, and no one pretended to be pleased to see each other. Maureen made us a cup of tea, and Martin and JJ asked her some polite questions about Matty. I just looked around a bit, because I didnt want to listen. She really had tidied up, like she said she was going to. There was almost nothing in the place, apart from the telly and things to sit on. It was like shed just moved in. In fact, I got the impression that shed moved things out and taken things down, because you could just make out marks on the wall. But then Martin was going, What do you think, Jess?, so I had to stop looking around and start joining in. We had plans to make.

No, I said. Ill try and be as clear as possible: there aint no such thing as CCR, and even if there was, Im not dying of it. I made it up, cos… I dont know. Partly cos I wanted your sympathy, and partly because I didnt think youd understand what was really wrong with me. Im sorry.

But I dont think youre a bad man.

I dont need to spell out how worried Ive been about Jess, and what a difference it would make to know that there was a sensible adult looking out for her.

Why? Martin asked.

Do you know Jess Crichton? Who? Jess Crichton, the Wossit Ministers daughter. Education.

Yeah, I know. Its just that I stopped being seven a while ago. Has anyone ever told you youre an idiot? He was terrified of her; you could see that straight away. He had just enough self-respect to hide the fear behind a dry world-weariness.

This time, I thought Id try to avoid that particular line of argument. I could see that the subject of parental responsibility was an altogether touchy one in the Crichton household, what with one teenage girl missing, possibly dead, and the other suicidal, possibly nuts. And anyway, my conscience was entirely clear. The only physical contact I had had with Jess was when I sat on her head, and that was for entirely non-sexual reasons. In fact, they were not only non-sexual, but selfless. Heroic, even.

Its hard for all of us. Crichton had clearly decided to make an effort.

Everyone reacts to something like that in different ways, dont they?

Ah. So you dont disagree with the premise.

I value our friendship too much to complicate it.

Jess, said Martin. You wanted us to meet. Why dont you call us to order? OK, she said, and she cleared her throat. We are gathered here today...

You tosser, said Jess.

Tell them what you want, I said. Tell them Daddy was sad, but then he cheered up again.

Im not sure thats quite what JJ is saying, said Martin.

Ive got enough self-respect to think that there might be a man somewhere whod rather spend New Years Eve with me than leap to his death, yes.

Oh, JJ! Jess said. Thats fantastic! It took me a minute to realize that in the weird world of Jess, they had not only found a cure for CCR during the Christmas holidays, but delivered it to my front door in the Angel shttps://read.99csw.comome time between New Years Eve and January nd.

I told you to stay upstairs.

Its perhaps because its something more usually said in church.

Listen, pal. I came here because I knew how worried you must be. But if youre going to talk to me like that, Ill fuck off home. The word-racist brightened a little: the Anglo-Saxon was striking back against the Roman invader.

Martin and I looked at each other, screwed up our faces, held our breaths, crossed our fingers, but it was no use. Jess was going to point out the obvious anyway.

This is how she talks to me, he said, looking at me mournfully, as if my long relationship with the two of them would somehow allow me to intercede on his behalf.

Thats about the long and the short of it.

Who? The fuck-bloody doctors. At Maureens house, fuck-bloody became Jesss curse of choice. You should sue them. Supposing youd jumped?

At least that makes more sense, she said after a while.

I gestured at myself, in order to draw their attention to my superb physical condition.

All you knew was that somehow theyd helped me to have sex with someone else.

How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a fuck. Ill tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, Id be like, And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.

And that was the end of the first phone call. Pointing out that her refusal to let me participate in my daughters upbringing left me out in the cold struck me as a restatement of the bleeding obvious, but never mind. It got her off the phone.

Maureen lives halfway between Toppers House and Kentish Town, in one of those little poky streets full of old ladies and teachers. I dont know for sure theyre teachers, but there are an awful lot of bikes around - bikes and recycling bins. Its shit, recycling, isnt it? I said to Martin, and he was like, If you say so. He sounded a bit tired. And I asked him if he wanted to know why it was shit, but he didnt. Just like he hadnt wanted to know why France was shit, either. He wasnt in a chatty mood, I suppose.

Martin laughed.

What sort of gang? said Crichton.

Try us out, said Martin. Were understanding people.

Ive been a friend of the family for many years. We all spent New Years Eve together. Perhaps thats how this rather silly misunderstanding arose. It wasnt a suicide pact. It was a drinks party. Two entirely different things.

How do you feel today? I hadnt asked myself that question. Id woken up with a hangover and the phone ringing, and since then, life seemed to have a momentum. I hadnt thought about killing myself once all morning.

I was nervous because I knew that we were going to meet Matty, and Im sort of not good with disabled people. Its nothing personal, and I dont think Im disablist, because I know theyve got rights to an education and bus passes and that; its just that they turn my stomach a bit. Its all that having to pretend theyre just like you and me when theyre not, really, are they? Im not talking disabled like people who have only got one leg, say.

My point is, said Crichton, that youre going to be around.

Penny was still crying when I called her.

And instead you came back down again with a girl.

You arsehole, said Jess.

Theyre all right. Im talking about the ones who arent right up top, and shout, and make funny faces. How can you say theyre like you and me?

Oi, said Jess. You dont have to say it like that.

I dont know. It doesnt seem like something talking can fix.

So what do you want me to do? Im not sure theres much you can do.

And Im supposed to feel reassured by that.

No! Bastards.

Well, if I did, I clearly made quite a mess of it, I said.

Brilliant. If we had a pair of two-year-olds, that would be perfect.

Thats enough, said Maureen. In my house. In front of my son.

You can get through a hundred quid, easy, said Jess.

Im sorry. But you know the family history now. It doesnt make things easy for me.

I left the house two hundred and fifty pounds richer; Jess was waiting for me at the end of the drive.

Is it true you tried to kill yourself? asked one particularly unattractive woman in a beige mac.

No, come on. If Im so fucking funny, I want to know why.

Oh, and one more thing - especially if youre reading this in the future, when everyones forgotten about us and how things turned out for us: dont sit around hoping for her to pop up later on, to rescue me. She doesnt come back, OK? And we dont find out shes dead, either. Nothing happens, so forget about it. Well, dont forget about her, because shes important. But forget about that sort of ending. Its not that sort of story.

Before I go on, Ill answer the questions that everyone always asks, just sos you dont sit there wondering and not concentrating on what Im saying.

You can do better than this, Penny. Better than me.