A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby Read Free Book Online Page B

march you there.’
    ‘I’ll go home on one condition.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘You help me find Chas first.’
    ‘All of us?’
    ‘Yeah. Or I really will kill myself. And I’m too young to do that. You said.’
    ‘I’m not sure I was right about that, looking back,’ said Martin. ‘You’re wise beyond your years. I can see that, now.’
    ‘So it’s OK if I go over?’ She started to walk towards the edge of the roof.
    ‘Come back here,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t give a fuck, you know,’ she said. ‘I can jump, or we can look for Chas. Same thing, to me.’
    And that’s the whole thing, right there, because we believed her. Maybe other people on other nights wouldn’t have but the three of us, that night, we had no doubts. It wasn’t that we thought she was really suicidal, either; it was just that it felt like she might do whatever she wanted to do, at any given moment, and if she wanted to jump off a building to see what it felt like, then she’d try it. And once you’d worked that out, then it was just a question of how much you cared.
    ‘But you don’t need our help,’ I said. ‘We don’t know how to start looking for Chas. You’re the only one who can find him.’
    ‘Yeah, but I get weird on my own. Confused. That’s sort of how I ended up here.’
    ‘What do you think?’ said Martin to the rest of us.
    ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Maureen. ‘I’m not leaving the roof, and I won’t change my mind.’
    ‘Fine. We wouldn’t ask you to.’
    ‘Because they’ll come looking for me.’
    ‘Who will?’
    ‘The people in the respite home.’
    ‘So what?’ said Jess. ‘What are they going to do if they can’t find you?’
    ‘They’ll put Matty somewhere terrible.’
    ‘This is the Matty who’s a vegetable? Does he give a shit where he goes?’
    Maureen looked at Martin helplessly.
    ‘Is it the money?’ said Martin. ‘Is that why you have to be dead by the morning?’
    Jess snorted, but I could see why he had asked the question.
    ‘I only paid for one night,’ said Maureen.
    ‘Have you got the money for more than one night?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ The suggestion that she might not seemed to make her a little pissed. Pissed off. Whatever.
    ‘So phone them up and tell them he’ll be staying two.’
    Maureen looked at him helplessly again. ‘Why?’
    ‘Because,’ said Jess. ‘Anyway, there’s fuck all to do up here, is there?’
    Martin laughed, kind of.
    ‘Well, is there?’ said Jess.
    ‘Nothing I can think of,’ said Martin. ‘Apart from the obvious.’
    ‘Oh, that,’ said Jess. ‘Forget it. The moment’s gone. I can tell. So we’ve got to find something else to do.’
    ‘So even if you’re right, and the moment has passed,’ I said, ‘why do we have to do anything together? Why don’t we go home and watch TV?’
    ‘’Cos I get weird on my own. I told you.’
    ‘Why should we care? We didn’t know you half an hour ago. I don’t give much of a fuck about how weird you get on your own.’
    ‘So you don’t feel like a bond kind of thing because of what we’ve been through.’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘You will. I can see us still being friends when we’re all old.’
    There was a silence. This was clearly not a vision shared by all.
MAUREEN
    I didn’t like it that they were making me sound tight. It wasn’t anything to do with money. I needed one night so I paid for one night. And then someone else would have to pay, but I wouldn’t be around to know.
    They didn’t understand, I could tell. I mean, they could understand that I was unhappy. But they couldn’t understand the logic of it. The way they looked at it was this: if I died, Matty would be put in a home somewhere. So why didn’t I just put him in a home and not die? What would the difference be? But that just goes to show that they didn’t understand me, or Matty, or Father Anthony, or anyone at the church. No one I know thinks that way.
    These people, though, Martin and JJ and Jess, they’re