Itll be in the local paper, said Maureen. They usually are. I used to read the reports. Especially when it was coming up to New Years Eve. I used to compare myself with them.

Maureen looked at me, and then she goes, Were worried about him.

We got off that roof sharpish once hed gone over. We decided it was best not to hang around and explain our role, or lack of it, in the poor chaps demise. We had a little Toppers previous, after all, and by owning up, wed only be confusing the issue. If people knew wed been up there, then the clarity of the story - unhappy man jumps off of building - would be diminished, and people would understand less of it, rather than more. We wouldnt want that.

MAUREEN It was in the local paper, the following week. I cut the story out, and kept it, and I read it every so often, just to try to understand the poor man better. I couldnt keep him out of my head. He was called David Fawley, and hed jumped because of problems with his wife and children. Shed met someone else, and moved away to be with him, and taken the kiddies with her. He only lived two streets away, which seemed very strange to me, a coincidence, until I realized that people in my local paper always lived locally, unless someone had visited to open a school or something. Glenda Jackson came to Mattys school once, for example.

And thats when I decided it was his business. If he had the freedom to fuck around, then he had the freedom to kill himself, too. Dont you think?

Typical American, said Jess. What do you want to do? Bomb some poor little country somewhere? Sure. It would take my mind off things, some bombing.

Anyway, that evening there was a whole jumble of thoughts. I lay in bed half-asleep, thinking about David, and the Scottish detective, and coming down off the roof to find Chas and eventually I got these thoughts unknotted, and when I woke up in the morning I decided it would be a good idea to find out where Martins wife and children lived, and then go and talk to them all and see if there was any chance of getting the family back together. Because if that worked, then Martin wouldnt get so eaten up about some things, and hed have somebody rather than nobody, and Id have something to do for forty or fifty minutes an hour, and it would help everybody.

Cindy said, Did he tell you I wouldnt let him see the girls?

If you thought about it, this David fella and me, we were opposites.

And the bus, I said. I just wanted her to know wed made an effort.

We decided not to tell JJ. We were pretty sure hed stop us for some bullshit reason or another. Hed say, Its none of your business, or, Youll fuck up the last chance hes got. But we thought we had a strong argument, Maureen and I. Our argument was this. Maybe Cindy did hate Martin because he was a real playa who went anywhere with anyone. But now he was suicidal, and he probably wouldnt go anywhere with anyone, or at least not for a while. So basically, if she wouldnt take him back, she had to hate him enough to want him to die. And thats a lot of hate. True, he hadnt ever said he wanted to get back with her, but he needed to be in a secure domestic environment, in a place like Torley Heath. It was better to do nothing in a place where there was nothing to do than in London, where there was trouble - teenage girls and nightclubs and tower-blocks. Thats what we felt.

I dont know, man. I just know that if we spend six weeks pissing and moaning, then were not helping ourselves.

Wont help Maureen, either, said Jess. Or JJ. I might change, though. I do, quite a lot.

A drama king, said Jess. He looked the sort.

The guy who jumped had two profound and apparently contradictory effects on us all. Firstly, he made us realize that we werent capable of killing ourselves. And secondly, this information made us suicidal again.

The exact arrangement of stuff that made you think your life was unbearable… Its got shifted around somehow. Its like a sort of real-life version of astrology.

Nothings going to change for you, said Jess. Youre still going to be the geezer off the telly who slept with the fifteen-year-old and went to prison. No one will ever forget that.

There was something else in the article I read: an interview with a man whod survived after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Its not much, said Jess. Only twenty quid here and twenty quid there.

I didnt properly understand what he meant until I saw that guy jump off the roof. Up until then, jumping had always been an option, a way out, money in the bank for a rainy day. And then suddenly tread.99csw.comhe money was gone - or rather, it had never been ours in the first place. It belonged to the guy who jumped, and people like him, because dangling your legs over the precipice is nothing unless youre prepared to go that extra two inches, and none of us had been. We could tell each other and ourselves something different - oh, I would have done it if she hadnt been there or he hadnt been there or if someone hadnt sat on my head - but the fact of the matter was that we were all still around, and wed all had ample opportunity not to be. Why had we come down that night? Wed come down because we thought we should go and look for some twit called Chas, who turned out not to be terribly germane to our story. Im not sure we could have persuaded old matey, the jumper, to go and look for Chas. He had other things on his mind. I wonder how he would have scored on Aaron T. Becks Suicide Intent Scale? Pretty high, I should think, unless Aaron T. Beck has been barking up the wrong tree. No one could say the intent wasnt there.

Shut up.

So it would appear, I said.

Whats your point? Well. Its not scientific, is it? What, and eighty-eight days would be? More scientific, yeah.

I agree. Were fucked, said JJ. Sorry, Maureen.

And she went, Oh, yes he does.

No fucking chance of that in this fucking country, said JJ. Sorry, Maureen.

We knocked on the door and Cindy answered, and she looked at me as if she half-recognized me, and I was like, Im Jess. Im one of the Toppers House Four, and I was, you know, linked to your husband or whatever in the newspapers. Which was a lie, by the way. (That was me telling her it was a lie, not me telling you. I really wish I knew where speech marks or whatever went. I can see the point of them now.) And she said, Ex-husband, which was sort of an unfriendly and unhelpful start.

You could always just go back where you came from, said Jess. That would change something. Also, your buildings are higher, arent they? So, I said. Forty-four days to go.

You sat on my head.

Thanks, man, said JJ. Very touching. Whens the ninety days up? March st.

What sort of things? Money.

I owe loads of people money, said Jess proudly.

And Cindy said, Yes, well, I cant say Im surprised. And Maureen tells her about the bloke who topped himself, and how it was because of how his wife and kids had left him, and Cindy said, You know Martin left us? We didnt leave him? And I was like, Yeah, thats why weve come. Because if youd left him, this whole trip would have been a waste of time. But, you know. Weve come down here to tell you hes changed his mind, sort of thing. And Maureen said, I think he knows that was a mistake. And Cindy goes, I had no doubt hed realize it in the long term, and I also had no doubt that by the time he did it would be too late. And I went, Its never too late to learn. And she went, It is for him. And I said I thought she owed him another chance, and she sort of smiled and said she disagreed and I said I disagreed with her disagreeing and she said we must agree to disagree. And I was like, So you want him to die, then?

At that point Maureen goes, Do you think we could come in and talk to you? Im Maureen. Im also a friend of Martins. Weve come down from London on the train.

So what? said Jess.

And Maureen said, Yes, he did mention that. And Cindy went, Well, thats not true. I just wont let him see them here. He could take them for weekends in London, but he wont. Or he says he will, but then he makes excuses. He doesnt want to be that sort of dad, you see. Its too much effort. He wants to come home from work, read them a story some nights but not every night, and go to see them in the Christmas play. He doesnt want all the other stuff. And then she was like, I dont know why Im telling you this. And I went, Hes a bit of a tosser, really, isnt he? And she laughed. Hes made a lot of mistakes, she said. And he continues to make them.

And that seemed about right to me, ten minutes an hour. It was probably about right for the programme, because he was a detective, and it was more important for him and for the viewers that he spent the biggest chunk of his time on solving the murders. But I think even if youre not in a TV programme, then ten minutes an hour is about right for your problems.

Fuck that, said Jess. And Im not sorry, Maureen.

What is? This. I gestured vaguely at our surroundings, the company we were keeping, the rain outside, all of which seemed to speak eloquently of our current condition. This is it. Theres no way out. Not even the way out is the way out. Not for us.

And my conclusion is that we are not srｅａd•９9csｗ.ｃoｍerious people. We were never serious. We got closer than some, but nowhere near as close as others. And that puts us in something of a bind.

There was a general shuffling of feet, which I interpreted as a declaration of reluctant solidarity.

And Cindy said, Listen, Ive been very patient with you up until now. Two strangers knock on my door and tell me to get back together with my ex-husband, a man who nearly destroyed me, and I invite them in and actually listen to them. But Paul is my partner, and part of my family, and a wonderful stepfather to the girls. And thats what its got to do with him.

Even so. A debts a debt. And if you cant pay… Maybe you should take the honourable way out.

And then she went a bit quiet, and I thought Id got her. But then she goes, I thought about killing myself too, when things were really bad, a while ago. But I didnt have the option, because of the girls. And its indicative of the way things are that he does have the option. Hes not part of a family. He hated being part of a family.

That evening, I watched a programme on the television about a Scottish detective who doesnt get on with his ex-wife very well, so I thought about David some more, because I dont suppose he got on very well with his ex-wife either. And Im not sure this was the point of the programme, but there wasnt much room in it for lots of arguments between the Scottish detective and his ex-wife, because most of the time he had to find out whod killed this woman and left her body outside her ex-husbands house to make it look as though hed killed her. (This was a different ex-husband.) So in an hour-long programme, there were probably only ten minutes of him arguing with his ex-wife, and his children, and fifty minutes of him trying to find whod put the womans body in the dustbin. Forty minutes, I suppose, if you took out the advertisements. I noticed because I was a bit more interested in the arguments than I was in the body, and the arguments didnt seem to come around very often.

Well. We went to that party. And we went on holiday. And, you know.

Were we? I was, said Jess.

So weve had forty-six of the ninety days.

Does he exploit their mood for financial gain - by offering a Miserable Hour, for example? Does he ever try to get the Uppers - in this context the very unhappy people - to mix with the Downers? Or the Uppers to mix with each other? Has there ever been a relationship born there? Could the pub even have been responsible for a wedding, and thus maybe a child?) We met again the following afternoon in Starbucks, and everyone had the blues. A few days previously, in the immediate aftermath of the holiday, it had been perfectly clear that we no longer had much use for each other; now, it was hard to imagine who else would be suitable company. I looked around the cafe at the other customers: young mothers with prams, young men and women in suits with mobile phones and pieces of paper, foreign students… I tried to imagine talking to any of them, but it was impossible. They wouldnt want to hear about people jumping off tower-blocks. No one would, apart from the people I was sitting with.

No, but, I dont know. He seems kind of important to me. That was what we were gonna do.

And we hadnt even gone through the front door.

But we gotta do something, said JJ. We cant just sit around waiting for three months to be up.

Guys, guys… I had, once again, allowed myself to be drawn into an undignified spat with Jess. I decided to act in a more statesmanlike manner.

No, I get it, said JJ. Three months sounds about right. Three months is like a season.

And she went, Is it?

And then Paul stood up and said, I think Ill take Harry Potter upstairs, and he nearly tripped over my feet, and Cindy dived over and was like, Careful, darling, and then I worked out he was blind. Blind! Fucking hell! Thats why he had a dog. Thats why she was trying to tell me he had a dog (because I was giving it all that stuff, like, Do I look nine years old oh God oh God). So wed gone all the way down there to tell Cindy she had to leave a blind man and get back together with a man who shagged fifteen-year-olds and treated her like shit. It shouldnt really have made any difference, though, should it? Theyre always going on about how they want to be treated the same as everyone else. So Ill leave the blind thing out of it. Ill just say that we went all the way down there to tell Cindy she had to leave an OK bloke who was good to her and her kids, and get back with an arsehole. And that still didnt sound great.

What guy? JJ asked.

was right. When I saw David Fawley ju九-九-藏-書mp, it made me see that I hadnt been ready on New Years Eve. Id been ready to make the preparations, because it gave me something to do - New Years Eve was something to look forward to, in a strange sort of way. And when Id met some people to talk to, then I was happy to talk, instead of jump. Theyd have let me jump, I think, once Id told them why I was up there. They wouldnt have got in my way, or sat on my head. But even so, Id gone down the stairs and on to the party. This poor David hadnt wanted to talk to us, that was the thing Id noticed. Hed come to jump, not to natter. I thought Id gone to jump, but I ended up nattering anyway.

So were seeing the winter through together. Thats cool. Winter is when you get the blues, JJ said.

And I went, Well I can see why you say that. Which was a mistake, because it didnt help my argument.

Anyway, the point was that we went through a whole journey to the middle of fucking nowhere without me asking her whether she had sex doggy style or anything like that. And what I realized then was that Id come a long way since New Years Eve. Id grown as a person. And that made me think that our story was sort of coming to an end, and it was going to be a happy ending. Because Id grown as a person, and also we were in this period where we were sorting out each others problems. We werent just sitting around moping. Thats when stories end, isnt it? When people show theyve learned things, and problems get solved. Ive seen loads of films like that. Wed sort out Martin today, and then turn our minds to JJ, and then me, and then Maureen. And wed meet on the roof after ninety days, and smile, and hug, and know that we had moved on.

And that Paul bloke goes, If he were a computer, youd have to say that theres a programming fault, so I was like, Whats it got to do with you?

Im talking about, like, finding a job waiting tables.

This suicidologist guy.

Cindy went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, Weve got visitors, and he was like, Oh, Im sorry. I was listening to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter. The children love it, so I thought I should give it a whirl. Have you heard it? So I was like, Yeah, do I look nine years old to you? And he didnt know what to say to that. He took the headphones off and pressed a button on the machine.

So I read the interview, and it said she lived in this village called Torley Heath, about forty miles outside London. And if she was trying to stop people like us from knocking on the door to tell her to get back with her husband, then she made a big mistake, because the interviewer described exactly where her house is in the village - opposite an old-fashioned corner shop, next door but one to the village school. She told us all this because she wanted us to know how idealistic or whatever Cindys life is. Apart from her ex-husband being in prison for sleeping with a fifteen-year-old.

And? How did you get on? Oh, said Maureen. I did OK. Some of them I couldnt understand.

And Cindy said, Its Pauls dog that the girls are playing with. And I was like, Yeah, so? But I didnt say that.

I prayed for Davids soul, even though I knew it wouldnt do him any good, because he had committed the sin of despair, and my prayers would fall on deaf ears. And then after Matty had gone to sleep, I left him alone for five minutes and walked down the road to see where David had lived. I dont know why I did that, or what I hoped to see, but there was nothing there, of course. It was one of these streets full of big houses that have been turned into flats, so thats what I found out, that he lived in a flat. And then it was time to turn around and go home.

Or drinking more water? Its like that.

Terrible, isnt it, how that happens? Youll have to block out some time in your diary. Otherwise life will keep getting in the way.

But I was a hopeless detective. I knew Martins wifes name was Cindy, so I looked Cindy Sharp up in the phone book, and she wasnt there, and I ran out of ideas after that. So I asked Jess, because I didnt think JJ would approve of my plan, and she found all the information we needed in about five minutes, on a computer. But then she wanted to come with me to see Cindy, and I said she could. I know, I know. But you try telling her she cant have something she wants.

And I went, Well, thats the thing, isnt it?

Jess is right, I said. Typical bloody American. "Helping ourselves." Self-help. You can do anything if you put your mind to it, right? You could be President.

Hed killed himself because his children were gone, and Id thought about it because my son was still around. Ther九_九_藏_書e must be a lot of that goes on. There must be people who kill themselves because their marriage is over, and others who kill themselves because they cant see a way out of the one theyre in. I wondered whether you could do that with everyone, whether every unhappy situation had an unhappy opposite situation. I couldnt see it with the people who had debts, though. No one ever killed himself because he had too much money. Those sheikhs with the oil dont seem to commit suicide very often. Or if they do, no one ever talks about it. Anyway, perhaps there was something in this opposites idea. I had someone, and David had no one, and hed jumped and I hadnt. When it comes to committing suicide, nobody beats somebody, if you see what I mean.

I got on Dads computer, and put Cindy Sharp into Google, and I found an interview shed given to some womans magazine when Martin had gone to prison. Cindy Sharp talks for the first time about her heartbreak and all that. You could even click on a picture of her and her two girls. Cindy looked like Penny, except older and a bit fatter, because of having had kids and that. And whats the betting that Penny looked like the fifteen-year-old, except that the fifteen-year-old was even slimmer than Penny, and had bigger tits or whatever? Theyre tossers, arent they, men like Martin? They think women are like fucking laptops or whatever, like, My old ones knackered and anyway, you can get ones that are slimmer and do more stuff now.

Like JJ, I have spent a long night cogitating, I said.

And he told me that the first time he failed on an attempt to quit the booze was the most terrifying day of his life. Hed always thought that he could stop drinking, if he ever got round to it, so he had a choice stashed away in a sock drawer somewhere at the back of his head. But when he found out that he had to drink, that the choice had never really been there… Well, he wanted to do away with himself, if I may temporarily confuse our issues.

This David Fawley was unemployed, so there was a fair old chance that he spent sixty minutes an hour thinking about his ex-wife, and his children, and when you do that, youre bound to end up on the roof of Toppers House.

This is it, I said. This is us.

He said that two seconds after jumping, he realized that there was nothing in his life he couldnt deal with, no problem he couldnt solve - apart from the problem hed just given himself by jumping off the bridge. I dont know why I didnt tell the others about that; youd think it might be relevant information. I wanted to keep it to myself for the time being, though. It seemed like something that might be more appropriate later, when the story was over. If it ever was.

I was up all fucking night thinking about that guy, said JJ. Man. What was going on there? He was probably just, you know. A drama queen. A male drama queen.

And Cindy said, Im sorry, come in. Not Im sorry, fuck off home, which is what I thought she was going to say. She was apologizing for her bad manners in making us stand out on the doorstep. So I was like, Oh, this is going to be easy. In ten minutes Ill have bullied her into taking him back.

So we charged down the stairs as fast as damaged lungs and varicosed legs would let us, and went our separate ways. We were too nervous to go for a drink in the immediate vicinity, and too nervous to travel in a taxi together, so we scattered the moment we reached the pavement. (What, I wondered on the way home, was the nearest pub to Toppers House like of an evening? Was it full of unhappy people on their way up, or half-confused, half-relieved people whod just come down? Or an awkward mix of the two? Does the landlord recognize the uniqueness of his clientele?

Very much like, I agreed. Given there are four seasons, and twelve months in a year.

Perhaps you should think of killing yourself, I said.

The bus stop was right outside the village shop that the article in the magazine had gone on about. So we got off the bus and stood outside the shop and looked across the road to see what we could see. What we saw was this little cottagey sort of place with a low wall, and you could look into the garden, and in the garden there were two little girls all wrapped up in hats and scarves and they were playing with a dog. So I went to Maureen, Do you know the names of Martins kids? And she was like, Yes, theyre called Polly and Maisie - which seemed about right, I thought. I could imagine Martin and Cindy having kids called Polly and Maisie, which are sort of old-fashioned posh names, so everyone could pretend that Mr Darcy or whatever lived next door. So I read.99csw.comshouted, Oo-o, Polly! Maisie! And they looked at us and came towards us, and that was my detective work over.

Tosser.

Great, said Jess. Lets all not kill ourselves because someone gave us a fifty pence tip.

But you havent done anything about it since.

And what happens after the ninety days? Nothing happens, I said. Just… things are different. Things change.

There was nothing else to think about. Id had more on my mind recently, because of the others, and the things that have happened in their lives. But most of the time, on most days, it was just me and my son, and that meant trouble.

Hey. Guys, JJ said. Lets keep some focus, huh? On what? Isnt that the problem? Nothing to focus on? Lets focus on that guy.

Thats a job? Everythings a job.

What is it with you assholes? Im not talking about becoming President.

But you didnt.

Yes. Well. Im sure the ninety days thing wont apply in my case, I said. If that makes you happier.

Theres no rope holding you back.

Im missing something, said Jess.

What should we do? I asked him.

Thats a bit of a coincidence, isnt it? said Jess. Exactly three months.

Thats very shrewd, Jess, I said. In the brief glimpse we got of him before he plunged to his death, he didnt strike me as someone with serious problems. Nothing on your scale, anyway.

And I went, Yes, it is. Because he doesnt have to be your ex-husband.

My point, anyway, is that we extend our deadline again. Because… Well, I dont know about you lot. But I realized this morning that Im not, you know, ready to go solo just yet. Its funny, because I dont actually like any of you very much. But you seem to be, I dont know… What I need.

So we walk into the cottage, and its cosy in there, but not all like out of a magazine, which I thought it would be. The furniture didnt really match, and it was old, and it smelled of the dog a bit. She showed us through to the sitting room and there was this geezer in there sitting by the fire. He was nice-looking, younger than her, and I thought, Oh-oh, hes got his feet under the table. Because he was listening to a Walkman with his shoes off, and you dont listen to a Walkman with your shoes off in someones house if youre just visiting, do you?

I should know. I dont have arguments, but there have been lots of times in my life when I couldnt stop Matty becoming sixty minutes an hour.

Cindy told him that we were friends of Martins, and he asked whether she wanted him to leave, and she said, No, of course not, whatever theyve come to say I want you to hear. So I said, Well, weve come to tell Cindy she should get back with Martin, so you might not want to hear that. And he didnt know what to say to that either.

We dont know anything about him.

The other night, I was going to tell you about something Id read in a magazine. About suicide. Do you remember? Anyway, this guy reckoned that the crisis period lasts ninety days.

That isnt a paradox, if you know anything about the perversity of human nature. A long time ago, I worked with an alcoholic -someone who must remain nameless because you will almost certainly have heard of him.

So we had a day out. Maureen made horrible like old-fashioned sandwiches with egg and stuff in them, which I couldnt eat. And we got the tube to Paddington, then the train to Newbury, and then a bus to Torley Heath. Id been worried that Maureen and I wouldnt have much to say to each other, and wed get really bored, and Id end up doing something stupid, because of the boredom. But it really wasnt like that, mostly because of me, and the effort I put in. I decided that I was going to be like an interviewer type-person, and Id spend the journey finding out about Maureens life, no matter how boring or depressing it was. The only trouble was that it was actually too boring and depressing to listen to, so I sort of switched off when she was talking, and thought up the next question. A couple of times she looked at me funny, so Im guessing that quite often she had just told me something and then I asked her about it again. Like once, I tuned back in to hear her go, something something something met Frank. So I went, When did you meet Frank, but I think what shed just said was, That was when I met Frank. So Id have to work on that, if I was ever to be an interviewer. But lets face it, I wouldnt be interviewing people who did nothing and had a disabled son, would I? So it would be easier to concentrate, because theyd be talking about their new films and other stuff youd actually want to know about.

You know how sometimes you know you should be eating more cabbage?

Theres been one thing after another.