by Nick Hornby
‘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 £250 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.’
‘So what you’re saying is, my life isn’t worth a hundred quid to you. That’s nice, after what happened to Jen. I wouldn’t have thought you had enough daughters to spare.’
‘Jess, that’s not fair.’
The front door slammed somewhere between the ‘not’ and the ‘fair’, and Crichton and I were left staring at each other.
‘I handled that badly,’ he said, ‘didn’t 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.’
‘I’ll give her as much as she wants, every time she asks for it,’ he said. ‘Please go and find her.’
I left the house two hundred and fifty pounds richer; Jess was waiting for me at the end of the drive.
‘I’ll bet you got double what we were asking for,’ she said. ‘Always works, when you mention Jen.’
JESS
You won’t believe this – I don’t think I do now – but in my head, what happened to Jen had fuck all to do with New Year’s 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 isn’t like that. I’m sure it must have been an ingredient, sort of thing, but it wasn’t the whole recipe. Say I’m a spaghetti Bolognese, well I reckon Jen is the tomatoes. Maybe the onions. Or even just the garlic. But she’s not the meat or the pasta.
Everyone reacts to something like that in different ways, don’t they? 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. 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. I’ll be honest about that.
Before I go on, I’ll answer the questions that everyone always asks, just so’s you don’t sit there wondering and not concentrating on what I’m saying. No, I don’t know where she is. Yes, I think she’s alive. Why I think she’s 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 can’t concentrate on anything else? Well, it feels like that all the time, every day.
There’s something else people ask: Where do you think she is? Which is different from: Do I know where she is? At first I didn’t 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 I’d go and look for her. But now I understand it as being a more poetic question. ’Cos, really, it’s a way of asking what she was like. Do I think she’s in Africa, helping people? Or do I think she’s on one long permanent rave, or writing poems on a Scottish island, or travelling through the bush in Australia? So here’s what I think. I think she has a baby, maybe in America, and she’s in a little town somewhere sunny, Texas, say, or California, and she’s living with a man who works hard with his hands and looks after her and loves her. So that’s what I tell people, except of course I don’t know whether I’m telling them about Jen or about me.
Oh, and one more thing – especially if you’re reading this in the future, when everyone’s forgotten about us and how things turned out for us: don’t sit around hoping for her to pop up later on, to rescue me. She doesn’t come back, OK? And we don’t find out she’s dead, either. Nothing happens, so forget about it. Well, don’t forget about her, because she’s important. But forget about that sort of ending. It’s not that sort of story.
Maureen lives halfway between Toppers’ House and Kentish Town, in one of those little poky streets full of old ladies and teachers. I don’t know for sure they’re teachers, but there are an awful lot of bikes around – bikes and recycling bins. It’s shit, recycling, isn’t 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 didn’t. Just like he hadn’t wanted to know why France was shit, either. H
e wasn’t in a chatty mood, I suppose.
It was just me and Martin in the car because JJ didn’t 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 it’s not stupid to say France is shit. It’s 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.
I was nervous because I knew that we were going to meet Matty, and I’m sort of not good with disabled people. It’s nothing personal, and I don’t think I’m disablist, because I know they’ve got rights to an education and bus passes and that; it’s just that they turn my stomach a bit. It’s all that having to pretend they’re just like you and me when they’re not, really, are they? I’m not talking ‘disabled’ like people who have only got one leg, say. They’re all right. I’m talking about the ones who aren’t right up top, and shout, and make funny faces. How can you say they’re like you and me? OK, I shout and make funny faces, but I know when I’m doing it. Most of the time I do, anyway. With them there’s no predicting, is there? They’re all over the place.
To be fair to him, though, Matty’s pretty quiet. He’s sort of so disabled that it’s OK, if you know what I mean. He just sits there. From my point of view, that’s probably better, although I can see that from his, it’s probably not much good. Except who knows whether he’s got a point of view? And if he hasn’t got one, then it’s got to be mine that counts, hasn’t it? He’s quite tall, and he’s in a wheelchair, and he’s got cushions and what have you stuffed up behind his neck to stop his head lolling about. He doesn’t look at you or anything, so you don’t get too freaked out. You forget he’s there after a while, so I coped better than I thought I would. Fucking hell, though. Poor old Maureen. I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t have persuaded me down from that roof. No way.
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 didn’t 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 she’d just moved in. In fact, I got the impression that she’d 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.
JJ
I didn’t want to go to Maureen’s place with Martin and Jess because I needed time to think. I’d 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 didn’t know anything about them. All I knew was that they’d somehow found out my address in twenty-four hours, and if they could do that, then what couldn’t 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.
Anyway, she made me totally paranoid. If she wanted to, she could find out about the band in five minutes. And then she’d get a hold of Eddie, and Lizzie, and then she’d find out that I wasn’t dying of anything – or if I was, I’d kept the news to myself. Plus, she’d find out that the disease I wasn’t dying of was non-existent.
In other words, I was freaked out enough to think I was in trouble. I took a bus up to Maureen’s, and on the way I decided I was going to come clean, tell them all about everything, and if they didn’t like it, fuck ’em. But I didn’t want them reading about it in the papers.
It took us a while to get used to the sound of poor Matty’s 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.
‘Jess,’ said Martin. ‘You wanted us to meet. Why don’t you call us to order?’
‘OK,’ she said, and she cleared her throat. ‘We are gathered here today…’
Martin laughed.
‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘I’ve only done half a sentence. What’s funny about that?’
Martin shook his head.
‘No, come on. If I’m so fucking funny, I want to know why.’
‘It’s perhaps because it’s something more usually said in church.’
There was a long pause.
‘Yeah. I knew that. That was the vibe I was after.’
‘Why?’ Martin asked.
‘Maureen, you go to church, don’t you?’ Jess said.
‘I used to,’ said Maureen.
‘Yeah, see. I was trying to make Maureen feel comfortable.’
‘Very thoughtful of you.’
‘Why do you have to fuck up everything I do?’
‘Gosh,’ said Martin. ‘I can almost smell the incense.’
‘Right, you can start it off then, you fucking…’
‘That’s enough,’ said Maureen. ‘In my house. In front of my son.’
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.
‘In front of your son? But he’s…’
‘I haven’t 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.
There was a silence. I was waiting for them to dump on me.
‘Oh, JJ!’ Jess said. ‘That’s 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 some time between New Year’s Eve and January 2nd.
‘I’m not sure that’s quite what JJ is saying,’ said Martin.
‘No,’ I said. ‘The thing is, I never had it.’
‘No! Bastards.’
‘Who?’
‘The fuck-bloody doctors.’ At Maureen’s house, ‘fuck-bloody’ became Jess’s curse of choice. ‘You should sue them. Supposing you’d jumped? And they’d got it wrong?’
Mother fucker. Did it really have to be this hard?
‘I’m not sure he’s quite saying that, either,’ said Martin.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll try and be as clear as possible: there ain’t no such thing as CCR, and even if there was, I’m not dying of it. I made it up, ’cos… I don’t know. Partly ’cos I wanted your sympathy, and partly because I didn’t think you’d understand what was really wrong with me. I’m sorry.’
‘You tosser,’ said Jess.
‘That’s awful,’ said Maureen.
‘You arsehole,’ said Jess.
Martin smiled. Telling people you have an incurable disease when you don’t 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 he’d done the decent thing when he got humiliated: he’d walked to the top of Toppers’ House and dangled his feet over the edge. OK, he didn’t go over, but, you know, he’d shown he was taking things seriously. Me, I’d thought about offing myself first and then disgraced myself afterwards. I’d become an even bigger asshole since New Year’s Eve, which was kind of depressing.
‘So why did you say it?’ Jess asked.
‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘What were you attempting to simplify?’
‘It just… I don’t know. Everything seemed so straightforward with you guys. Martin and the, you know. And Maureen and…’ I nodded over to Ma
tty.
‘Wasn’t straightforward with me,’ said Jess. ‘I was crapping on about Chas and explanations.’
‘Yeah, but… No offense, but you were nutso. Didn’t really matter what you said.’
‘So what was wrong with you?’ Maureen asked.
‘I don’t know. Depression, I suppose you’d call it.’
‘Oh, we understand depression,’said Martin. ‘We’re all depressed.’
‘Yeah, I know. But mine seemed too… too fucking vague. Sorry, Maureen.’
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’. I’ll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I’d be like, ‘And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.’ How could you not, if you’re a human being? Maybe they’re not so admirable. Maybe they’re robot zombies.
‘Try us out,’ said Martin. ‘We’re understanding people.’
‘OK. So the short version is, all I ever wanted to do was be in a rock’n’roll band.’
‘Rock’n’roll? Like Bill Haley and the Comets?’ said Martin.
‘No, man. That’s not… Like, I don’t know. The Stones. Or…’
‘They’re not rock’n’roll,’ said Jess. ‘Are they? They’re rock.’
‘OK, OK, all I wanted to do was be in a rock band. Like the Stones, or, or…’
‘Crusty music,’ said Jess. She wasn’t being rude. She was just clarifying my terms.
‘Whatever. Jeez. And a few weeks before Christmas my band finally split up for good. And soon after we split, I lost my girl. She was English. That’s why I was here.’
There was a silence.
‘That’s it?’ said Jess.
‘That’s it.’
‘That’s pathetic. I see why you came out with all that crap about the disease now. You’d rather die than not be in a band that sounds like the Rolling Stones? I’d be the opposite. I’d rather die if I was. Do people still like them in America? No one does here.’
‘That’s Mick Jagger, isn’t it, the Rolling Stones?’ Maureen asked. ‘They were quite good, weren’t they? They did well for themselves.’
