This time, I thought I’d 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.
Chris Crichton, unfortunately, was not prepared to greet me as a hero. I wasn’t 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 Jess’s surname and phone number and called him. And I had somehow shown “a lack of taste”—Mr Crichton seemed under the impression that his daughter’s appearance in the tabloids was something to do with me, simply because I’m 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. I’d just stood up to go when Jess appeared.
“I told you to stay upstairs.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just that I stopped being seven a while ago. Has anyone ever told you you’re 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.
“I’m a politician. No one ever tells me anything but.”
“What’s it got to do with you where I spend New Year’s Eve?”
“You seem to have spent it together.”
“Yeah, by accident, you stupid old bastard.”
“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.
“I’ll bet you’re regretting the decision not to go private, aren’t you?”
“I’m 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.”
“Jess’s school does a very good job under very difficult circumstances,” said Crichton. “Fifty-one per cent of Jess’s year got grade C or above at GCSE, up eleven per cent on the year before.”
“Excellent. That must be a great consolation to you.” We both looked at Jess, who gave us the finger.
“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.
“Firstly, she’s 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. I’m sorry I didn’t write you a full report at the end of the evening.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Why is that your business, Dad?”
I wasn’t having that. I wasn’t going to get involved in an argument about Jess’s rights to a private sex life.
“Absolutely not.”
“Oi,” said Jess. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re relieved or something. You should be so lucky.”
“I value our friendship too much to complicate it.”
“Ha ha.”
“Are you going to maintain a relationship with Jess?”
“Define your terms.”
“I think you should define yours first.”
“Listen, pal. I came here because I knew how worried you must be. But if you’re going to talk to me like that, I’ll fuck off home.” The word-racist brightened a little: the Anglo-Saxon was striking back against the Roman invader.
“I’m sorry. But you know the family history now. It doesn’t make things easy for me.”
“Ha! Like it makes things easy for me,” said Jess.
“It’s hard for all of us.” Crichton had clearly decided to make an effort.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“So what can we do? Please? If you’ve got any ideas…”
“The thing is,” I said, “I’ve got problems of my own.”
“Der,” said Jess. “We were wondering why you were up there.”
“I appreciate that, Martin.” He had clearly been media-trained to use first names wherever possible, like the rest of Blair’s robots, to show that he was my mate. “I have a hunch about you. I can see you’ve made some, some wrong turns in your life…”
Jess snorted.
“But I don’t think you’re a bad man.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re in a gang,” said Jess. “Aren’t we, Martin?”
“We are, Jess,” I said, with what I hoped her father would recognize as a weary lack of enthusiasm. “We’re friends for ever.”
“What sort of gang?” said Crichton.
“We’re going to watch out for each other. Aren’t 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 they’d come from.
“So you will be in loco parentis after all?”
“I’m not sure it’s that sort of gang,” I said. “ «The Loco Parentis gang"… Doesn’t 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.
“My point is,” said Crichton, “that you’re going to be around.”
“He’s promised,” Jess said.
“And I’m supposed to feel reassured by that.”
“You can feel what you like,” I said. “But I’m not reassuring anyone about anything.”
“You have children of your own, I understand?”
“Sort of,” said Jess.
“I don’t need to spell out how worried I’ve been about Jess, and what a difference it would make to know that there was a sensible adult looking out for her.”
Jess sniggered unhelpfully.
“I know you wouldn’t be… You’re not exactly… Some of the tabloids would…”
“He’s worried about you sleeping with fifteen-year-olds,” said Jess.
“I’m not being interviewed for this job,” I said. “I don’t want it, and if you choose to give it to me, that’s your lookout.”
“All I want you to say is that if you see Jess getting herself into serious trouble, then you’ll either try to prevent it, or you’ll tell me about it.”
“He’d love to,” said Jess. “But he’s flat broke.”
“Why is money relevant?”
“Because say he had to keep an eye on me and I’d gone into some club or something, and they wouldn’t let him in because he’s skint… Well”
“Well what?”
“I could go in there and OD on smack. I’d be dead, just because you were too mean to stump up.”
I suddenly saw Jess’s point: a weekly wage of Ј250 from Britain’s 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.
“How much do you want?” Crichton let out a sigh, as if everything—the conversation we were having, New Year’s Eve, my prison sentence—had been carefully plotted to lead to this moment.
“I don’t want anything,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” said Jess. “Yes he does.”
“How much does it cost to get into a club, these days?” Crichton asked.
“You can get through a hundred quid, easy,” said Jess.
A hundred quid? We were humiliating ourselves for the price of a decent dinner for two?
“I don’t doubt you can «get through» a hundred quid without trying. But he wouldn’t need to «get through» anything, would he? He’d only need the price of admission, if you’d overdosed on drugs. I’m presuming that he wouldn’t be stopping at the bar, if you were hovering between life and death in the toilet.”