“We can find you a mint, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’ve got some chewing gum,” said Jess.
“I’m not much of a one for chewing gum,” said Maureen. “Anyway, I’ve got a bridge that’s a bit loose. And I didn’t bother getting it fixed because…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. I think we all had a few things we hadn’t got around to fixing, for obvious reasons.
“So we’ll find you a mint,” said Martin. “Or you can clean your teeth if you want. You can use Penny’s toothbrush.”
“Thank you.”
She got to her feet and then sat down again on the floor.
“What am I going to do? About the bag?”
It was a question for all of us, but Martin and I looked at Jess for the answer. Or rather, we knew the answer, but the answer would have to come in the form of another question, and we had both learned, over the course of the night, that Jess would be the one who was tactless enough to ask it.
“The thing is,” said Jess, right on cue, “do you need it?”
“Oh,” said Maureen, as the bag implications started to penetrate.
“Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“If you don’t know whether you’re gonna need it, just say so. “Cos, you know. It’s a big question, and we wouldn’t want to rush you. But if you know for sure you won’t be needing it, then probably best say so now. That’d save us all a trip, see.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to come with me.”
“We’d want to,” said Jess. “Wouldn’t we?”
“And if you know you don’t want your keys, you can stay here for the day,” said Martin.
“Don’t worry about them.”
“I see,” Maureen said. “Right. I hadn’t really… I thought, I don’t know. I was going to put off thinking about it for a few hours.”
“OK,” Martin said. “Fair enough. So let’s go back.”
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all. It would be silly to kill yourself just because you didn’t have your handbag.”
When we got to Toppers’ House, I realized that I’d left Ivan’s moped there the night before. It wasn’t there any more, and I felt bad, because he’s not such a bad guy, Ivan, and it’s not like he’s some fucking Rolls-Royce-drivin”, cigar-smokin” capitalist. He’s too poor. In fact, he drives one of his own mopeds around. Anyway, now I can never face him again, although one of the beauties of a minimum-wage, cash-in-hand job is that you can clean windshields at traffic lights and make pretty much the same money.
“I left my car here, too,” said Martin.
“And that’s gone as well?”
“The door was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. It was supposed to be an act of charity. There won’t be any more of those.”
The bag was where Maureen had left it, though, right in the corner of the roof. It wasn’t until we got up there that we could see we’d made it through to dawn, just about. It was a proper dawn, too, with a sun and a blue sky. We walked around the roof to see what we could see, and the others gave me an American-in-London sightseeing tour: St Paul’s, the Ferris wheel down by the river, Jess’s house.
“It’s not scary any more,” said Martin.
“You reckon?” said Jess. “Have you looked over the edge? Fucking hell. It’s a fuck sight better in the dark, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t mean the drop,” said Martin. “I meant London. It looks all right.”
“It looks beautiful,” said Maureen. “I can’t remember the last time I could see so much.”
“I didn’t mean that either. I meant… I don’t know. There were all those fireworks, and people walking around, and we were squeezed up here because there was nowhere else for us to go.”
“Yeah. Unless you’d been invited to a dinner party,” I said. “Like you had.”
“I didn’t know anyone there. I’d been invited out of pity. I didn’t belong.”
“And you feel included now?”
“There’s nothing down there to feel excluded from. It’s just a big city again. Look. He’s on his own. And she’s on her own.”
“She’s a fucking traffic warden,” said Jess.
“Yes, and she’s on her own, and today she’s got fewer friends than me even. But last night she was probably dancing on a table somewhere.”
“With other traffic wardens, probably,” said Jess.
“And I wasn’t with other TV presenters.”
“Or perverts,” said Jess.
“No. Agreed. I was on my own.”
“Apart from the other people at the dinner party,” I said. “But yeah. We hear where you’re coming from. That’s why New Year’s Eve is such a popular night for suicides.”
“When’s the next one?” Jess asked.
“December 31st,” said Martin.
“Yeah, yeah. Ha, ha. The next popular night?”
“That would be Valentine’s Day,” said Martin.
“What’s that? Six weeks?” said Jess. “So let’s give it another six weeks, then. What about that? We’ll probably all feel terrible on Valentine’s Day.”
We all stared thoughtfully at the view. Six weeks seemed all right. Six weeks didn’t seem too long. Life could change in six weeks—unless you had a severely disabled child to care for. Or your career had gone up in fucking smoke. Or unless you were a national laughing stock.
“D’you know how you’ll be feeling in six weeks?” Maureen asked me.
Oh, yes—and unless you had a terminal disease. Life wouldn’t change much then, either. I shrugged. How the fuck did I know how I’d be feeling? This disease was brand new. No one was able to predict its course—not even me, and I invented it.
“So are we going to meet again before the six weeks is up?”
“I’m sorry, but… When did we become «we»?” said Martin. “Why do we even have to meet in six weeks? Why can’t we just kill ourselves wherever and whenever we want?”
“No one’s stopping you,” said Jess.
“Surely the whole purpose of this exercise is that someone is stopping me. We’re all stopping each other.”
“Until the six weeks is up, yeah.”
“So when you said, «No one’s stopping you,» then you meant the opposite.”
“Listen,” said Jess. “If you go home now and put your head in the gas oven, what am I going to do about it?”
“Exactly. So the purpose of the exercise is?”
“I’m asking, aren’t I? Because if we’re a gang, then we’ll all try and live by the rules. And there’s only one, anyway. Rule 1: We don’t kill ourselves for six weeks. And if we’re not a gang, then, you know. Whatever. So are we a gang, or not a gang?”
“Not a gang,” said Martin.
“Why aren’t we?”
“No offence, but…” Martin clearly hoped these three words, and a wave of the hand in our general direction, would save him from having to explain himself. I wasn’t going to let him off the hook, though.
I hadn’t felt like I was in this gang either, until that moment. And now I belonged to the gang that Martin didn’t like much, and I felt real committed to it.
“But what?” I said.
“Well. You’re not, you know. My Kind Of People.” He said it like that, I swear. I heard the capitals as clearly as I heard the lower case.
“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.”